EDEHN

Helene Maisonnave, Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu, Martin Henseler, Ramos Emmanuel Mabugu

There is no doubt that the pandemic has had a devastating impact on South Africa and its economy. During economic crises, women often pay a heavy price and Covid-19 is no exception.

As in much of the world, the commerce, catering and personal care sectors faced closure or witnessed their activities severely restricted to contain the spread of the virus. These sectors employ a large majority of women.

Women are also over-represented in the health sector and thus more likely to be on the frontline of the epidemic. School closures, meanwhile, led to an increase in women’s domestic workloads.

Before the crisis, the situation of women in South Africa was already worrying. Women were more likely to be unemployed or in lower-paid jobs than men, while the poverty rate for women is 17 percentage points higher than it is for men.
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This raises the question of whether the crisis has exacerbated existing gender inequalities in the labour market and increased the vulnerability of South African women.

In a recent study, we examined how the pandemic affected the South African economy and women in particular. We found that women have been more affected than men.

This finding is in line with other studies that the pandemic causes more negative effects to sectors that rely on female labour, which leads to women earning less than their male counterparts. As a result, this pandemic has increased vulnerability and poverty for female-headed households more than for male-headed households.