Minister Dlamini calls on participants of Jobs Summit to focus on Women

Following the announcement by the State President for the country to take extraordinary measures to create jobs, all participants in the Jobs Summit are urged to consider that the women continue to be paid less than their male counterparts who do the same, and sometimes less work

PRETORIA, South Africa, October 4, 2018,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- The Minister in the Presidency Responsible for Women, Ms. Bathabile Dlamini, calls on all participants to the Jobs Summit to ensure that women are at the center of all deliberations to unfold in the upcoming two days.

“Following the announcement by the State President for the country to take extraordinary measures to create jobs, all participants in the Jobs Summit are urged to consider that the women continue to be paid less than their male counterparts who do the same, and sometimes less work. Moreover; women are disproportionately overrepresented in industries with the highest numbers of workers earning less than R20 per hour. These conditions are confirmed by the latest statistics from the Office of the Statistician-General, which show that women, particularly Black women, are less likely to participate in the labour market. We can confidently attribute this to, amongst others, gendered exposure/s to education, historic trivializing of women’s work, the exclusion of women from formal work, and/or the systematic segregation of women into the lower working classes” asserted the Minister.

The Minister further states that the transformation of the South African regulatory labour landscape will be characterized by the salary-increase of approximately a third of employees in the lowest-paying sectors, which amounts to about 6.6 million workers. Noting that the large majority of these workers are women, it is important that extraordinary measures to create jobs consider the concept of a national minimum wage in relation to the gender pay-gap, and the overall socio-economic emancipation of women.

However, debates on measures to accelerate job creation should not be limited to the gender wage gap. Rather, legislative successes such as the minimum wage should be viewed as they are intended: as a complementary component of the wider national labour law framework. This includes the Basic Conditions of Employment and Labour Relations Amendment Bills, other social and employment laws and policies, and collective bargaining processes.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Republic of South Africa: Department of Government Communication and Information.