This article profiles gender gaps in economics higher education, teaching and research in South Africa to prompt informed reflection and debate. While there has been notable progress in addressing gender imbalances among economics students and staff, disparities remain, particularly at the doctoral and professorial levels. Therefore, there remains significant potential to further advance women in economics.
Economics students
There has been a growing share of female undergraduate enrolments across South Africa’s 26 public universities (Figure 1). Since 2017, female enrolments in economics[1] have consistently outpaced those of men. In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, gender parity in enrolments was reached at all academic levels, except among doctoral students (Figure 2). Furthermore, at diploma, bachelor’s, and honours levels, the share of females graduating was higher than their share in enrolment.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Convergence towards gender parity in doctoral enrolment does, however, seem imminent. The share of female PhD students increased by 10 percentage points from 31% in 2012 to 41% in 2022 – an increase of just under a third (32%). However, advancing women to leadership positions in academia will require expanding the pipeline of female economists at master’s and PhD level, and continued effort needs to be made.
Economics staff
The share of female staff in economics[2] has oscillated around 40% over the 2012-2022 period, reaching 42% in 2022, up from 38% in 2012 (Figure 3). Female representation in economics falls into the bottom half of the distribution (in terms of female representation) among the disciplines presented in Figure 3, comparable with computer and information sciences.
Figure 3
While growth in the share of female staff has been modest, the share of Black staff members (Black broadly defined to include Coloured and Indian) has risen strongly over the period, at a similar rate for both genders. That said, this share remains below that of Black undergraduate students, suggesting that the rate at which Black students transition to academic staff members lags that seen for White students. One potential explanation is that staff transformation is a process that takes time, and as the sector graduates more Black female economists, the staff profile will catch up. Alternatively, there may be opportunity costs to remaining in academic economics (vs. private sector or industry) that differ for graduates depending on their race.
Gender disparities are more pronounced at higher academic ranks, although there has been notable progress (Figure 4). The share of female staff in lecturer positions has increased, and this is the only staff rank that reached gender parity by 2022 (aside from the ‘below and undesignated’ group, which fluctuates). There have also been notable improvements in the share of female professors over time: growing from 11% in 2012 to 31% in 2022.
Figure 4
Considering the share of professors by age and gender, Figure 5 shows that White males have an age-related advantage. The youngest age that we observe White males reaching professor level is at 31, followed by Black males and White females 4-5 years later, whereas Black female professors lag more than 5 years behind White males. The gaps that exist among older staff may partly be a function of time. If a career is for example 40 years on average, those who are 60 years old would likely have started their careers during apartheid.
Figure 5
The gender and racial gap in professorships may also relate to differential rates of PhD attainment between Black and White academics by age and gender (Figure 6). The Black male and White female trend lines are lower than the White male line until age 40, and Black female academics have the lowest share of PhD holders at each age.
Figure 6
There are multiple factors that could impact differences in the rate of professorship (e.g., age, qualification, type of institution). However, individual characteristics may also be rewarded differently within the economics profession due to gender or racial inequities. We therefore quantify the share of the gender professorship gap that can be attributed to differences in measurable, performance-related characteristics versus an unexplained component.[3] The ‘explained gap’ is the difference due to observable characteristics between male and female staff that relate to performance as a professor (e.g., qualification, experience etc.). The ‘unexplained gap’ is the residual due to differences in the reward to these characteristics (in terms of obtaining professorship) depending on whether an individual is male or female. It therefore includes potential forms of discrimination.
The overall gap in the share of male versus female professorships has declined over time and is increasingly explained by covariates that we can observe in our data. This feels like a positive shift. However, when we assess the gap in professorships between White males and other groups (i.e. White females and Black males and females combined), the share of the gap explained by covariates, while initially large and increasing until 2017, has subsequently declined from 90.1% in 2017 to 44.8% in 2022 (Table 1). This illustrates that a substantial portion of this specific gap is due to unexplained factors, suggesting that White males retain an advantage in this space even though female and Black academics have similar observable characteristics.
Table 1
Conclusion
While there has been notable progress in addressing gender imbalances in the economics education, teaching, and research landscape in South Africa, disparities remain particularly at the doctoral and professorial levels. Female students now represent the majority of enrolments and graduates at most qualification levels but remain under-represented in PhD programs and senior academic ranks. Although the proportion of female professors has increased, the academic profession has not yet achieved equity, particularly among historically disadvantaged groups.
Achieving gender parity in economics is not just about representation; it is also about enriching teaching and research with diverse perspectives. Continued progress in advancing female staff in economics will require sustained commitment, and concerted efforts to support women through the academic pipeline should therefore continue.
This project was funded by the International Economics Association – Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE). Look out for the link to our full, detailed report in a forthcoming newsletter.
Data reference
Department of Higher Education and Training. Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS), 2012 to 2022 [Dataset]. Pretoria: Department of Higher Education and Training [Producer]. [Privately Distributed].
[1] Discipline defined by the Classification of Educational Subject Matter (CESM) of a student’s main specialization.
[2] Full-time equivalent (FTE) permanent research and teaching staff based on time spent in economics CESM. Public universities only.
[3] We apply the Oaxaca Blinder decomposition (Blinder, 1973; Oaxaca,1973), which is a counterfactual technique that decomposes the professorship gap into an explained and unexplained component.