Women on South African boards: Facts, fiction and forward thinking 

While gains have been made, the patterns of women’s board representation remain stagnant. This report focuses on practices to increase more women on boards across Australia, Germany, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and European Union. Differences between mandatory quotas and voluntary targets. Gaps in the current South Africa legislation and policy. Several indirect measures to get more women on boards. The report concludes with recommendations on how to develop balanced boards. 

 

Winds of change: Trade as a catalyst for board gender diversity  

This report builds on the 2020 report Women on South African boards: Facts, fiction and forward thinking, as we explore how important European Union (EU) trade partners and South Africa can learn from each other to create systemic change in both their own and partner countries to encourage gender parity on boards. The report presents information on the composition of boards of directors in different EU jurisdictions and in South Africa. It discusses director term limits and the importance of different board roles. The report contains a summary of recommendations of key learnings about the advancement of women on boards for South Africa and EU trade partners. 

The gender pay gap guide for the already converted 

As a guide for the already converted, this document does not spend time on facts and statistics on how big the wage gap is. Rather, the guide is a toolkit of rational arguments and suggested actions to use to help to close the gap – at an individual, organisational and national level. 

 

Gender pay transparency mechanisms: Future directions for South Africa 

We undertook a comparison between the global and national mechanisms of gender pay transparency to propose a way forward to increase transparency in gender pay for South Africa. In addition to a discussion of existing mechanisms, a summary of the gender pay transparency mechanisms of 16 countries is provided as supplementary material to the article. We found that South Africa could strengthen legislated transparency mechanisms, especially with regard to pay reporting and pay audits, provided that sanctions are attached to non-delivery of these duties. 

Women in business in Africa 

Special Collection of the South African Journal of Business Management edited by Anita Bosch and Lize Booysen. 

 

Articles in the special collection are: 

• Women in business in Africa: (Re)claiming our agency – Anita Bosch and Lize Booysen 

Whilst scholarly articles on women in the workplace in African populations, focusing either on workplaces created by women entrepreneurs or women employees, have been published in other South African and international journals, this still constitutes a negligible slice of the global research on women at work and in business. This limited count and the diffuse topics relating to women at work and in business in the SAJBM and in scholarly research on women at work in Africa signalled a need for a special collection. 

This special collection invited publications on research that highlights positive developments in women’s business and organisational participation in Africa, in order to expand our understanding of how women overcome and circumvent limitations, or how women reconfigure and adjust existing social patterns when leading and managing business organisations. In this special collection, we centred women within business management research, moved beyond theorising about barriers and limitations that women experience, and, instead, explored the agency that women hold, develop and employ when navigating spaces that were previously predominantly occupied by men. 

• Gender composition of ownership and management of firms and the gender digital divide in Africa 

Emmanuel Orkoh, Wilma Viviers 

• Entrepreneurial ecosystems created by woman entrepreneurs in Botswana 

Anastacia Mamabolo, Reitumetse Lekoko 

•  Sandwiched between groups: Upward career experiences of South African Indian women 

Nasima M.H. Carrim 

• ‘We are surviving well’: Adaptive strategies applied by women in an underground South African mine  

Salome Jansen van Vuuren, Marius W. Stander, Vera Roos