Women in SA continue to bear a double (or triple) burden - Women spend disproportionately more time on unpaid care and domestic work than men. Remunerating them for this would a step towards gender parity
, as women’s employment levels reduced to 36% in April 2020 . Male employment reduced to 54% from 59% pre-pandemic. Among women who kept their jobs, the average hours worked fell to 23 a week compared to 29 hours for men .
In South Africa, where both men and women indicated that they resided with a child, both parents reported spending additional hours on childcare. However, these differences are very gendered as about 80% of women, compared to 65% of men, reported to have been spending 4 extra hours on childcare. In his speech in celebration of Women’s Day this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged that the time had come to pay women for the work they do at home. This is a tacit recognition of the burden of unpaid care work that is overwhelmingly borne by women. This, of course, raises the question: how do we value such work?
Arabo Ewinyu is a research manager at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has an MCom in economics from Wits.
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