Nobel winner’s story shows uphill battle for women

At the recent jobs summit it was agreed that companies should annually disclose pay gaps between male and female employees. Disclosure will initially be voluntary but may become obligatory.

In the UK, where disclosure is already compulsory for larger employers, it was revealed that in 2017 men on average earned 18% more than women. The UK evidence suggests SA should extend reporting on pay gaps to the government. There, 90% of public sector organisations pay men more than women _— about 14% more on average.

Gender pay differences are the result not only of men earning more than women in the same position but also the preponderance of men in senior positions and of women in lowwage positions. These differences persist even though women now make up almost half the workforce and more than half of university graduates in many countries.

Academia is not exempt from gender discrimination. This year’s Nobel prize winner, Donna Strickland, is only the third woman to win the physics prize. She has yet to rise above associate professor at her university. This has raised the question: what must women do to secure full professor status?

Analysis by Alice Wu of an online platform that allows US economists to post anonymously about job opportunities and economics topics revealed sexist and demeaning language towards female economists. The New York Times calls it evidence of a “toxic” environment for women in economics.

Rhodes University graduate student Siobhan Hitchcock recently looked into gender achievement in SA universities. About 58% of students at higher education institutions in SA are female and in 2016 women made up 62% of undergraduate and 57% of postgraduate qualifications awarded. These shares are unusually high by global standards. But before congratulating ourselves on having created a nonsexist SA, it must be remembered that the proportion of South Africans attending university is very low. Only half the school-going cohort eventually writes matric, and a much smaller proportion achieves the bachelor pass level necessary for university study.

The dropout rate is much greater for boys than girls and reasons for this need to be examined. Stellenbosch University’s Nic Spaull has noted that the exceptionally poor performance of SA schoolboys starts very early. SA came last in 2016 out of 50 countries in grade 4 reading ability (eight out of 10 of our children cannot read for meaning) and the gender difference (in favour of girls in our case) was the second- largest of all participating countries. This clearly contributes to SA’s preponderance of female university students, but Hitchcock still finds evidence of lower female participation in business and commerce courses, as well as in science, engineering and technology.

Female participation also declines at postgraduate level in SA, despite the pass rate for women at university being higher than men.

One universal reason why women avoid certain university courses and fail to proceed to postgraduate study is the absence of female role models. Hitchcock finds that women comprise 60% of the administrative staff, but just less than half of the academics at SA higher education institutions.

Moreover, women’s share declines the more senior the appointment. A sample of five economics departments reveals that only 31% of all academic staff are women, 29% of associate professors and just 16% of full professors.

SA’s education challenges are massive and very complex. Improving overall performance at school should be declared a national emergency. However, confronting these problems should not blind us to the need also to tackle the lower participation of women in important subjects and disciplines, their progress to postgraduate study, and why, despite their sustained higher performance throughout education, they earn less.

Dealing with gender inequality is not just a matter of equity. The IMF suggests it could significantly boost our GDP. It is critical if we are ever to reduce the skills shortages that hamper our economic performance.

● Keeton is with the economics department at Rhodes University.