Women are more concentrated in clerical work, which accounted for 17% of female employment against 5.8% for men.
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Women account for 44 of every 100 employed people in South Africa, but where they work varies dramatically across the economy.
New Statistics South Africa analysis shows women make up more than half of workers in personal services, accommodation, food and beverages, and retail trade, while they remain heavily underrepresented in construction, mining, transport and storage, and the motor trade.
The analysis draws on the agency’s structural industry surveys, which provide a more detailed look at employment within VAT-registered businesses than broader labour market data.
“Gender representation varies across the economy, with women more highly represented in some industries compared with others. But most interesting of all is that gender representation varies within industries,” says Statistics South Africa.
Women occupy more than 70% of jobs in social work and hospital, medical and dental activities, putting these among the most female-dominated parts of the formal economy, it said.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is construction. Construction was particularly male-dominated, with women poorly represented across the industry rather than in only certain types of work, Statistics South Africa found.
Renting construction or demolition equipment recorded the lowest proportion of female employees among the 123 types of work Statistics South Africa examined, followed by painting and decorating and the mining of dimension stone.
At the same time, women are broadly underrepresented in manufacturing, yet account for more than 60% of jobs in textiles and clothing.
A similar pattern emerges in transport and storage. While the industry overall employs relatively few women, they occupy more than 60% of jobs in travel agencies.
Even personal services, the industry with the highest overall female representation, contains substantial differences. Women account for just more than a third of employment in sporting activities, compared with three quarters in social work.
Women already face a disadvantage because they are less likely to be employed.
Statistics South Africa found that women represented just more than half of South Africa’s 42.3 million working-age population in the second quarter of 2026, but their official unemployment rate stood at 37.5%, compared with 30.3% for men.
Young women are also struggling to gain a foothold, with 38.2% of women aged 15 to 24 not in employment, education or training, compared with 34.6% of young men.
The gender divide continues once women find work. Just seven in ten employed women were in managerial occupations in the second quarter, compared with 10% of employed men.
The gap persists at the highest levels of corporate South Africa. BDO South Africa’s 2026 #GiveToGain report found women held 38% of board seats among JSE Top 40 companies in 2025, but only 27.4% of executive roles.
While nine companies had reached or exceeded gender parity on their boards, just three had female CEOs and six had female board chairs, BDO found.
Research from SNG Grant Thornton paints a somewhat brighter picture further down the leadership ladder. Its Women in Business 2026 research put women in almost half of senior management positions in South Africa, substantially above the global figure of a third.
Women were instead far more concentrated in clerical work, which accounted for 17% of female employment against 5.8% for men, Statistics South Africa said. Domestic work accounted for 10.8% of employed women, compared with just 0.5% of men.
