Quality of work and unpaid reproductive labour in the South African labour market

Since the 1970s and 1980s, women’s increased labour force participation has caught the attention of scholars, governments, labour unions and organisations such as the ILO. The increase in female labour force participation has accompanied the globalisation and liberalisation of product and labour markets around the world. As a result of these changing characteristics around the labour force, particularly as it relates to growing precariousness in the labour market, the ILO developed the Decent Work Agenda to set a standard with which to measure workplace vulnerability. They also listed gender equality as a cross-cutting goal of the Agenda and recognise the reproductive labour of women and its contribution to women’s vulnerability in the labour market. Using a Decent Work Index as an indicator for quality of work, this study made use of two waves of the South African time-use survey to investigate the relationship between time spent on unpaid reproductive labour and the quality of paid work. The analysis found that there is a significant relationship between time spent on unpaid reproductive labour and the quality of paid work, although this relationship is only significant for female workers. Furthermore, the study finds that this relationship was also only significant when economic and labour market conditions were relatively poor. This confirms the theorisations of feminist scholars who have written about the pressure which is put on households during times of economic distress when governments employ contractionary fiscal measures and businesses scale down by reducing benefits and laying workers off. Given that this relationship is only significant for women, this confirms that women’s domestic responsibilities are in fact a hindrance to their advancement in the labour market and a key source of gender inequality in the productive sphere

The Effects of COVID-19 on Women in South Africa: An Analysis using the Social Provisioning Framework

The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in the South African government imposing a hard lockdown, bringing the majority of economic activities to a halt. For many countries, this pandemic has worsened existing gender inequalities, although in one of the world’s most unequal countries, these inequalities have become particularly visible. This descriptive study used the five methodological starting points of the social provisioning framework to dissect how this pandemic has affected South African women, a group which has historically been disadvantaged, but has become even more so during the pandemic. The starting points include considering caring and domestic labour, human well-being, human agency, validating ethical judgements, and adopting an intersectional analysis. This paper has drawn together information from various sources which have collected data throughout South Africa’s lockdown to paint a picture of the economic effects which the global pandemic has had on women. It has demonstrated how South Africa’s labour market, social security framework, and issues related to corruption – all of which had been challenges before the lockdown – have exacerbated gender inequality. Though many policy toolkits are available for devising policies aimed at promoting gender equality or at gender mainstreaming existing policies, the social provisioning framework complements the various toolkits by issuing a challenge to adopt a more critical way of thinking about women’s issues within society

A gender-based investigation of the determinants of labour market outcomes in the South African labour market

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree of Masters in Development Theory and Policy Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management School of Economic and Business Sciences University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa February 2016In this report, the individual and household circumstances which influence the probability of a person having a certain labour market outcome, and how these outcomes differ by gender, will be investigated. While a number of similar studies have been conducted, this report contributes to the South African literature by investigating, using more recent data from the National Income Dynamics Study, what the determining factors are that drive women and men to the labour market, and determine employment outcomes. Furthermore, the investigation is extended by exploring whether these factors differ for men and women by age cohort. The main hypothesis of the study is that the determinants, which impact labour market outcomes and a successful transition from being not economically active or unemployed in a given period, to becoming employed in another period, differ for males and females; with factors such as education, labour market experience, and other household factors like marital status and children in the home being more important for women than for men. The results of the econometric analysis suggest that education is important for both sexes, but is of particular importance in determining the labour force participation and employment probabilities of women and the youth cohort. Furthermore, the location in which an individual resides is an important determinant of the labour market outcomes of women, with women in urban areas having the most favourable labour market outcomes. Having pensioners in the home has an adverse effect on the employment probabilities of men, while it is positively related to the employment probabilities of young women. Children in the home reduce the labour force participation of both men and women, but have a negative effect on the employment probabilities of women.MT201

Feminist Political Economy. A Global Perspective

Feminist political economy is essential to understanding the power relations and hierarchies that shape and sustain contemporary capitalism. Motivated by the rejection of gender-blind approaches in economics feminist political economy provides compelling insights into the relations between the economic, the social and the political in the reproduction of inequality. Sara Cantillon, Odile Mackett and Sara Stevano have written a much-needed introduction to key topics in feminist political economy, including the global division of labour, social reproduction, child and elder care, the household and intra-household inequalities, labour market inequalities, welfare regimes, the feminization of poverty and economic indicators. The authors take a global perspective throughout and engage in debates that are relevant for the Global North and/or the Global South. The book offers readers a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the role of power relations and inequality in the economy and is suitable for a variety of courses in political economy, feminism, gender studies, economics, social policy and development studies