How technology is widening the gender inequality gap in South Africa

Not only are women more financially responsible than their male counterparts, but they are also increasingly losing out at work at a time when technology is developing at a rate of knots.

 As the World Bank has noted earlier, even with the current rates of improvement, full gender parity will only be reached in 134 years, or around 2158. In terms of economic participation, the Bank’s Women, Business, and Law index, combines indicators of the legal environment for women within employment and entrepreneurship on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being “perfect”.

South Africa’s measurement against this index was 88.1 – above the average of 78.9 in the 2023 report. This does perhaps not tell the full story. The index measures enabling legal frameworks, such as whether the law mandates equal work for equal pay, and not the actual situation. South Africa’s November 2024 report on the progress made on the implementation of the Beijing platform for action quoted Sindisiwe Chikunga, Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, as saying that the report showed that South Africa had made progress in areas such as education, health, social protection and political representation of women.

However, Chikunga wrote, there are still challenges when it comes to aspects such as improving the inclusive nature of the economy to increase women’s participation and absorption into the labour force and increasing representation of women in some sectors, especially within the private sector.

Old Mutual Corporate Consultants Consulting Analytics and Insights Manager, Keri-Lee Edmond, has said that the financial service’s research has found a “significant gender pay gap of between 20% and 40%”. She added that looking back, this gap is widening. “Although access to employment and management positions is improving, albeit slowly, for women, men continue to dominate the pay sphere, both in absolute incomes and annual salary increases,” said Edmond.

During an Old Mutual Big Business Insights podcast towards the end of February, Phillipa Geard, founder and CEO of RecruitMyMom, said: “It’s not about having a number on a tick box of women in senior leadership; it’s about what contribution this woman [is] able to bring”. Geard noted that more than a third of women in South Africa are sole income earners. She added that aspects such as “fair wages, medical, maternity, and general mental health support at this time are really important”.

Technology, or the lack thereof, seems to be compounding this issue. The GSMA’s Mobile Gender Gap Report 2024 found in its latest research that, although the gender gap in mobile internet adoption has narrowed for the first time since 2020, “this gender gap is also still substantial”.

In a piece written by Nadia Jeffrie, senior insights manager at the GMSA’s Connected Women unit, she said: “These gender gaps are widest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The gender gap in mobile internet narrowed slightly in sub-Saharan Africa between 2022 and 2023 for the first time in five years, from 36% to 32%, but this gender gap is similar to what it was in 2017 (34%).”

Digitisation and emerging technologies enable some of Africa’s most transformative opportunities. Yet, women continue to lag in accessing quality education and employment in the digital economy, Lohini Moodley, communications, media, and technology partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman, said. “Key barriers such as affordability, digital illiteracy, and infrastructure continue to limit women’s participation in the digital economy.

To close this gap, the telecom sector should collaborate with governments and private stakeholders to drive inclusive solutions – affordable data, access to affordable smartphones, targeted digital literacy programmes, and infrastructure investments that connect underserved communities,” said Moodley. The biggest challenge hindering women in developing their career progression, especially in tech, is their under-representation in new fields like artificial intelligence (AI), said Linda Saunders, Salesforce country leader and senior director of Solution Engineering Africa. “Across all sectors, systems need to become more welcoming and more equitable. To open up the technology industry specifically, the role of business to address the issue of equity should begin with education,” she said.

Vanashree Govender, media relations and communications manager for Huawei South Africa, said that women continue to be underrepresented as innovators and decision-makers in technology even though the digital economy is rapidly advancing. This, she said, hinders progress and stifles potential. “A more inclusive future requires targeted investment in female talent, particularly within science, technology, engineering and maths fields. However, achieving gender equality extends beyond education; it depends on expanding access, promoting mentorship, and creating leadership opportunities,” Govender said.

“Encouraging more women to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, and maths will help businesses address women’s under-representation in emerging roles such as cloud computing, engineering, data, and AI,” said Saunders. Moodley added that “diverse leadership fosters innovation and ensures solutions are built for everyone. By prioritising mentorship, skills development, and equitable hiring, we can accelerate digital transformation in a way that includes and empowers women.”

There are incredible benefits to having women in leadership roles. McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report stated that companies with more women in leadership benefit from greater innovation, healthier cultures, and stronger performance. “The digital economy holds immense potential to close gender disparities but only if we act now to prevent the exclusion of women,” Moodley said. The World Bank noted that its estimates showed that gross domestic production per capita could increase by as much as 20% “if gender employment gaps were eliminated”.

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