Gugu Mjadu Over the month of August, South Africa has celebrated the women of the country, shining a spotlight on their achievements, while also bringing to light some of the challenges that they still face. Despite decades of significant progress made towards female empowerment, many challenges still remain and achieving gender equality in the workplace is evidently one of these. This is according to Gugu Mjadu, executive general manager: marketing at Business Partners Limited, who refers to a survey recently released by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which reveals that women represent just 20 percent of senior management and executives in South Africa, and that 61 percent are paid less than the median of the sample. Business owners have a noble responsibility of contributing towards society achieving gender parity, she says. “Starting within their own businesses, business owners need to play an active role in managing the process to minimise tensions between men and women in th...

The Benefits of Gender Equality South Africa’s ability to embrace transformation is known worldwide, its muscle is flexed once again as it deals with gender diversity in the workplace. The MasterCard Index results seem to show that gender equality in South Africa still needs major improvement. It highlights that there are still more men in leadership positions than women. The index suggests that for every 100 men, there are 57.5 women in business leadership roles in organisations; and that for every 100 males, there are 25.5 women that own their own businesses.  As alarming as this is, are there benefits that businesses can enjoy by embracing more women participation in senior management? According to an ACCA report titled Increasing gender diversity to boost performance there are many benefits for organisations that choose to embrace this. The report says that organisations that lack a gender balance are unrepresentative of the society in which they operate because women m...