Women hold 44 of every 100 jobs in South Africa, Stats SA finds
Female representation is highest in social work and hospitals and lowest in construction equipment rental, and the gaps run inside industries as well as between them.
Women hold 44 of every 100 jobs in the South African workforce, according to Statistics South Africa, and where those jobs sit depends heavily on the industry. The agency’s structural industry surveys show that female representation is concentrated in personal services, accommodation, food and beverages, and retail trade, where women account for more than half of employment. It is thinnest in construction, mining, transport and storage, and the motor trade.
The finding comes from Stats SA’s series of structural industry surveys, which cover financial and employment data for businesses registered for value-added tax, the formal business sector. The figures were published on 28 August 2026 and are drawn from the agency’s detailed industry reports, which are updated every three to five years in a staggered cycle. The headline employment share of 44% comes from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the agency’s quarterly measure of the labour market.
The gap between industries
The bird’s-eye view is stark. Personal services records the highest level of women’s representation of any industry, while construction records the lowest. Mining, transport and storage, and the motor trade also sit at the bottom of the scale. The structural data allow a finer reading than the quarterly survey, because they break each industry into activities. Data exist for 123 activities across 14 of the 16 industries covered.
At the top of that list, more than 70% of jobs in social work and in hospital, medical and dental activities were held by women. Women occupied 77,1% of jobs in hospital activities and 75,8% in medical and dental practice activities. At the other end, renting of construction or demolition equipment recorded the lowest percentage of female employment, followed by painting and decorating and the mining of dimension stone.
The gap inside industries
The more useful insight is that representation varies within industries, not only between them. Personal services stretches from 36,2% in sporting activities to 76,7% in social work. Construction, by contrast, is clustered tightly at the low end, which indicates that the underrepresentation of women there is a broad characteristic of the industry rather than the effect of a few activities.
Two outliers stand out. Women are broadly underrepresented in manufacturing and in transport and storage, yet they occupy more than 60% of jobs in textiles and clothing, a manufacturing activity, and in travel agencies, which fall under transport and storage. An activity can diverge sharply from the wider gender profile of its industry.
Representation differs across industries, it differs within industries, and an activity can run against the profile of the industry it belongs to.
The mining figures cover only employees directly employed by mines. Workers hired through labour brokers, subcontractors and capital employees are excluded, which limits what the mining number can be read to mean.
Why it matters
The numbers describe where women’s paid work sits in the formal economy, and the pattern matters for how the labour market is understood and for where policy attention goes. Industries clustered at the low end, such as construction, will not shift on the strength of a single programme. The presence of high-representation activities inside low-representation industries, such as textiles and clothing and travel agencies, shows that the barrier is not the industry as a whole but the specific work within it.
Stats SA cautions that the latest data from the structural industry surveys may not cover the same year, because the surveys are large and complex and are published on a staggered cycle. That means the industry figures should be read as the most recent detailed picture available, not as a single snapshot of one year.
The full detail sits in the agency’s industry reports, including those for construction, manufacturing, personal services, transport and storage, and retail trade, all published on the Stats SA website. The next quarterly labour force release will update the 44% headline figure, while the structural surveys will continue to fill in the activity-level picture as each industry’s turn comes around.
