The impact of COVID-19 on the Gender Wage Gap in South Africa
Date
2023-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in large distributional changes in the South African labour market. Prior to the pandemic, South African women were compensated less relative to South African men. This paper applies the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender wage gap between February 2020, April 2020, June 2020 and March 2021. Results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic widened the existing monthly gender wage gap, while barely altering the hourly wage gap over the given period. The study finds that the main contributor to the gender wage gap is discrimination in the South African labour market. Key variables that contributed to the discrimination component across all periods are population group and having children aged below 7 years. Gender differences in the composition of the employment sector, having young children and hours of work also significantly contributed to the gender wage gap. These results suggest a need for gender- sensitive policies to improve the labour market position of disadvantaged individuals
Description
A Research Report submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Commerce: Economic Science-CCA11 (50% Research) in the School of Economics and Finance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Keywords
Gender wage ga, Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition, Pandemic, South Africa, UCTD, COVID-19
Citation
Ngcobo, Khwezi. (2023). The impact of COVID-19 on the Gender Wage Gap in South Africa [Master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WireDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38773