As Women's Month draws to a close, the country's latest labour figures highlighted a persistent gender gap in unemployment, but a broader look at women’s economic contribution revealed millions are doing unpaid work that is largely invisible in official employment and GDP statistics.
The Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the second quarter of 2026 put South Africa’s official unemployment rate at 33.6%, up from 32.7% in the first quarter.
Women continued to face a significantly higher unemployment rate than men, at 37.5% compared with 30.3%.
According to Eighty20, South Africa’s consumer analytics and research business, the figures only tell part of the story of women’s participation in the economy.
“The headline unemployment rate only tells part of the story. It doesn't count the millions of women doing unpaid care work at home. It very likely undercounts the side hustles and small enterprises many women run alongside that work. Add those in, and women are carrying a far bigger share of this economy than the official numbers recognise,” Eighty20 stated.
The findings come during Women's Month, which this year marks 70 years since thousands of women marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against the apartheid government's pass laws.
The unemployment gap remains
Although women continue to experience higher unemployment than men, the gap has narrowed considerably over the longer term.
According to the October 1995 Household Survey, unemployment stood at 20.5% for women compared with 12.3% for men.
Overall unemployment subsequently increased sharply, while the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted progress and widened the gender gap again.
Despite these setbacks, the longer term trend has been towards greater convergence between male and female unemployment.
The QLFS figures for the second quarter of 2026 showed that women remain disproportionately affected by unemployment, with their unemployment rate more than seven percentage points higher than that of men.
The labour market figures also masked another contradiction.
South African women have made substantial gains in education, but those gains have not translated equally into better positions in the workplace.
Women are leading in education but lagging in management
Between 2008 and 2023, the number of female graduates increased by an average of 4.3% a year, compared with 2.5% for men.
By 2023, women accounted for two out of every three graduates and outnumbered men in almost every qualification category, with doctorates being the notable exception.
However, the occupational structure tells a different story.
Stats SA's Q2 2025 QLFS showed that 21.5% of employed women were in elementary occupations, compared with 10.8% of employed men.
At the management level, only 7.1% of employed women held managerial positions, compared with 10% of men.
This means women are increasingly dominating the education pipeline while remaining overrepresented in lower paid occupations and underrepresented in management.
Women are also making gains in government
Women's representation in South Africa's public service has also increased.
Representation in the Senior Management Service rose from 42.4% in 2019 to 45.2% in 2023.
By April 2026, the Minister of Public Service and Administration confirmed that women's representation had surpassed government's 50% employment equity target, including at senior management level.
Overall, women occupy 779,481 of the public service's approximately 1.2 million positions.
The progress demonstrates that greater representation is possible when deliberate policies and targets are put in place.
But outside formal employment, millions of women continue to contribute to household economies without their work being reflected in conventional economic measures.
The invisible economy of unpaid care
Eighty20's analysis showed the scale of unpaid work performed predominantly by women.
Of the 2.4 million adults who are outside the labour force because of homemaking responsibilities, approximately 2.1 million, or 88%, are women.
These women are not classified as unemployed because the official definition of unemployment requires people to be actively looking for work.
Their unpaid work includes childcare, household management and caring responsibilities, all of which support the functioning of households and allow other members of the family to participate in paid employment.
Yet this contribution does not appear directly in GDP or employment statistics.
Eighty20 added that including these women in measures of economic activity would significantly change the picture of women's participation in the economy.
If the 2.1 million women classified as homemakers were instead considered economically active, the female labour force participation rate would rise from 54.9% to approximately 64.8%.
That would put women almost level with men, whose labour force participation rate stands at 64.4%.
The adjustment would also reduce the female unemployment rate from 37.5% to approximately 31.9%, bringing it much closer to the male unemployment rate of 30.3%.
The Mothers of the Nation
The scale of this hidden economic contribution is visible in Eighty20's Mothers of the Nation segment.
The segment consists of approximately seven million low income women, around 40% of whom are grant recipients. Most are unemployed or underemployed, with an average personal income of approximately R1,000 a month.
Average household income, however, is around eight times higher.
When women in this segment are employed, they are typically found in elementary occupations. Most domestic workers fall into this category.
The financial vulnerability of these households is further highlighted by family structures. Among women with children under the age of two, 67% are single or have never been married.
This leaves many women carrying significant household and caregiving responsibilities while operating with limited personal income and few formal employment opportunities.
Measuring the work women actually do
Eighty20's analysis raised a broader question about how South Africa measures economic participation.
Traditional labour statistics are designed to measure participation in formal and informal economic activity, but they do not place an economic value on unpaid household and caregiving work.
That means a woman caring for children, managing a household and supporting other family members to work can effectively disappear from the employment statistics.
Yet without that unpaid contribution, the wider household economy would function very differently.
The same issue applies to women running small businesses and side hustles alongside household responsibilities.
Where these activities are informal, irregular or undertaken alongside unpaid care work, they can be difficult to capture fully through conventional labour statistics.
ashley.lechman@nationalmg.co.za