South Africa’s high unemployment rate, at 34.4 percent in the second quarter of this year, could have been worse if it were not for the efforts of women entrepreneurs who strive under difficult circumstances to keep their businesses and jobs afloat, the Lioness Business Agility Webinar heard this week.
Dr Linda Zuze, a research director for Lioness Data, said it was important to keep in mind the role of women entrepreneurs during these difficult times.
“Unemployment among women was at 36 percent, slightly higher. There are millions of women who are excluded from the calculation because they were no longer actively seeking employment. Those are now grouped as discouraged job-seekers falling out of the 36 percent. So when those discouraged job seekers are factored into the numbers, the actual unemployment rate among women in South Africa now is almost 49 percent,” said Zuze.
The study found that women entrepreneurs were absorbing a lot of financial strain personally to keep their businesses afloat, because only very few were able to access Covid-19 business assistance or secure external financing when they needed it. To cope, about 70 percent of women entrepreneurs said they had either reduced their own salaries or stopped taking a salary altogether.
The deputy chief executive of Absa Retail and Business Bank, Bongiwe Gangeni, said there was never enough data available on the impact that women have in the business and entrepreneurial space.
“We are always talking about women-owned businesses and the impact that they have in the entrepreneurial space, but there is always a lack of data about what the impact is and what it looks like,” said Gangeni.
She said the data from the survey was particularly opportune given the latest unemployment data. The survey data showed the impact women were having on this country to create employment opportunities.
Gangeni said what was interesting was that even in instances where women-owned businesses did not directly employ people, their impact was seen in the value chain. Their ventures sometimes did not create jobs, but they had a multiplier effect on the economy.
The South African Women Entrepreneurs Job Creators Survey data released in June was collected online from 913 women entrepreneurs in South Africa between November 23 last year and April 2 this year, and informed by a further 150 qualitative interviews of women entrepreneurs during the same period. Participants were recruited through the Lionesses of Africa network, to represent a wide range of business types, sizes and sectors.
The survey provides insights into solo entrepreneurs who are creating jobs for themselves and entrepreneurs with employees. The participating women entrepreneurs with employees had, on average, 29 employees, whereas the “typical” or median entrepreneur employed five staff, while the top 1 percent had a thousand or more employees. The majority of companies with employees hired their first employee early in the life of their business, 67 percent within the first year. This indicated that women entrepreneurs were not only creating jobs, but were doing so in the very early stage of their company’s life cycle.
In terms of future hiring plans, among the entrepreneurs who employ staff, more than a third considered current staffing levels to be inadequate for their needs, and 41 percent were actively recruiting. Of those who were hiring, 73 percent reported that they were hiring to help meet demand, 12 percent to bring additional skills into the business, and 12 percent were hiring, or rehiring, to replace employees who had left or were let go.
Lionesses of Africa founder Melanie Hawken said survey findings showed there was real self-belief on the part of women entrepreneurs in their ability to create jobs and that remained one of the key drivers of their motivation to build sustainable businesses.
BUSINESS REPORT