Despite advances in the post-apartheid era, women still lack access to the formal economy. Hence, the National Development Plan (South Africa Government, 2012) specifically seeks to promote gender equality and the development and provision of greater opportunities for women ¨C both in the rural and urban areas.

It is within this context that the 2018 Job Summit was convened. The central objective of this summit was to identify solutions, opportunities and challenges to job creation and retention of skills faced by each of the social partners to ensure that the country¡¯s skillset and employment profile resembles the country¡¯s gender; racial and spatial make up (South Africa, Framework Agreement, 2018). Emerging from this summit was the proposal to address the gender wage gap, an element identified as a key barrier to achieving inclusion and equity at the firm level and broadly in the economy. Although current Employment Equity reporting structures require firms to report salary information, major inconsistencies in measurement and calculation make it difficult to compare trends over time and across firms.

A key outcome of the Job Summit was the proposal of a pilot project to understand the gender pay gap. This pilot project would have the following three objectives. Firstly, to develop a simple and standardised methodology that firms of different sizes can apply across various sectors. Secondly, to apply the devised methodology to a selection of firms to calculate gender wage gaps. Lastly, based on emerging results to determine solutions to improving and correcting identified wage gaps.