Ebook Trends in the gender wage gap and gender discrimination among part-time and fulltime workers in post-apartheid South Africa
Investigating and explaining gender wage differentials and gender discrimination is a key area of analysis in the international labour market literature. Extensive research has revealed that women are typically paid less than men, and that the gender wage gap has narrowed over time (Blau and Kahn 1992, 1997, 2000, 2007, Hersch 1991, Bernhardt et al 1995, Brainerd 2000, Manning and Robinson 2004). In South Africa, research documenting gender differences in pay and the effects of gender-based labour market discrimination is more limited, with much of the literature focusing rather on racial wage gaps.
Using data from the October Household Surveys a few studies have, however, documented evidence of gender discrimination in wages particularly among Whites and Africans (Hinks 2002, Rospabé 2001 and Grün 2004). Most recently, Ntuli (2007) uses quantile regression techniques to explore the gender wage gap measured at different points in the distribution of wages among formally employed Africans. Surprisingly, she finds an increase in the gender wage gap from 1995 to 2004.
This study contributes to the small (but growing) body of literature on gender wage gaps in the country, using data from the 1995 and 1999 October Household Surveys (OHSs) and from the September 2001 and 2006 Labour Force Surveys (LFSs). The study explores changes in the gender wage gap among the wage employed in post-apartheid South Africa, distinguishing between part-time and full-time employment.
Inequalities in wages, by both gender and race, are affected by government policy. Following the election of the African National Congress as South Africa’s ruling party in 1994, various pieces of protective labour legislation (including the Labour Relations Act of 1995, the 1997 Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the 1998 Employment Equity Act) were introduced by the government in order to address racial and gender inequalities in both job access and pay, and to improve the conditions of employment of workers more generally. This legislation, if effective, should have significant implications, not only for earnings disparities by race, but also for earnings differentials between men and women.
Furthermore, unskilled jobs and other occupations traditionally associated with women, such as domestic work, are likely to be specifically influenced by legislation as a result of their exceedingly poor employment conditions and low pay. These occupations are overrepresented in female part-time employment in South Africa (Posel and Muller 2007). It may therefore be expected that any decline in the gender wage gap would be more pronounced among those working part-time.
Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique (OB), both local and international studies investigating wage gaps at the cross-section have distinguished between two key factors accounting for any wage differential, namely differences in the productive characteristics of men and women, and differences in how these characteristics are valued. Researchers typically find that a significant portion of any wage differential remains ‘unexplained’ and it is this portion that is usually attributed to the effects of labour market discrimination. Along with the OB, which is used to decompose the gender wage differential within each group at the cross-section, this study utilises the Juhn Murphy Pierce technique (JMP) to decompose the change in the estimated gender wage gap over time into various components.
The JMP attributes a portion of the change in the wage gap to changes in gender specific factors such as discrimination and relative levels of labour market skills. In addition, it accounts for the effect that changes in the overall structure of wages (in terms of changes in the market rewards to observed and unobserved skills and rents) may have on the gender wage differential (Juhn et al 1993, Blau and Khan 1997, Brainerd 2000).
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