Publications

• 2022 Women’s Report
• 2021 Childcare as an enabler of women’s economic participation 
• 2020 The rise of the black woman: Celebrating black women’s excellence 
• 2019  Women and politics 
• 2018  Women blue-collar workers
• 2017  Fairness in relation to women at work 
• 2016  Pregnancy in the workplace
• 2015  Equal pay for equal value
• 2014 Work and women’s reproductive health
• 2013 Women and political leadership
• 2012 Practical equity

Women on South African boards: Facts, fiction and forward thinking

While gains have been made, the patterns of women’s board representation remain stagnant. This report focuses on practices to increase more women on boards across Australia, Germany, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and European Union. Differences between mandatory quotas and voluntary targets. Gaps in the current South Africa legislation and policy. Several indirect measures to get more women on boards. The report concludes with recommendations on how to develop balanced boards.

Winds of change: Trade as a catalyst for board gender diversity

This report builds on the 2020 report Women on South African boards: Facts, fiction and forward thinking, as we explore how important European Union (EU) trade partners and South Africa can learn from each other to create systemic change in both their own and partner countries to encourage gender parity on boards. The report presents information on the composition of boards of directors in different EU jurisdictions and in South Africa. It discusses director term limits and the importance of different board roles. The report contains a summary of recommendations of key learnings about the advancement of women on boards for South Africa and EU trade partners.

The gender pay gap guide for the already converted

As a guide for the already converted, this document does not spend time on facts and statistics on how big the wage gap is. Rather, the guide is a toolkit of rational arguments and suggested actions to use to help to close the gap – at an individual, organisational and national level. 

Gender pay transparency mechanisms: Future directions for South Africa

We undertook a comparison between the global and national mechanisms of gender pay transparency to propose a way forward to increase transparency in gender pay for South Africa. In addition to a discussion of existing mechanisms, a summary of the gender pay transparency mechanisms of 16 countries is provided as supplementary material to the article. We found that South Africa could strengthen legislated transparency mechanisms, especially with regard to pay reporting and pay audits, provided that sanctions are attached to non-delivery of these duties. 

Whilst scholarly articles on women in the workplace in African populations, focusing either on workplaces created by women entrepreneurs or women employees, have been published in other South African and international journals, this still constitutes a negligible slice of the global research on women at work and in business. This limited count and the diffuse topics relating to women at work and in business in the SAJBM and in scholarly research on women at work in Africa signalled a need for a special collection. 

This special collection invited publications on research that highlights positive developments in women’s business and organisational participation in Africa, in order to expand our understanding of how women overcome and circumvent limitations, or how women reconfigure and adjust existing social patterns when leading and managing business organisations. In this special collection, we centred women within business management research, moved beyond theorising about barriers and limitations that women experience, and, instead, explored the agency that women hold, develop and employ when navigating spaces that were previously predominantly occupied by men. 

Special Collection of the South African Journal of Business Management edited by Anita Bosch and Lize Booysen.

Articles in the special collection are:

• Women in business in Africa: (Re)claiming our agency – Anita Bosch and Lize Booysen
• Gender composition of ownership and management of firms and the gender digital divide in Africa - Emmanuel Orkoh, Wilma Viviers 
• Entrepreneurial ecosystems created by woman entrepreneurs in Botswana - Anastacia Mamabolo, Reitumetse Lekoko 
• Sandwiched between groups: Upward career experiences of South African Indian women - Nasima M.H. Carrim 
• ‘We are surviving well’: Adaptive strategies applied by women in an underground South African mine - Salome Jansen van Vuuren, Marius W. Stander, Vera Roos 

Mary Anthea Cohen

Title: Construct clarification and contextualization of workplace bullying among nurse academics within South African Universities

Promotors: Prof Anita Bosch and Prof Anita S. van der Merwe

Numerous international publications highlight the phenomenon of workplace bullying (WPB) among nurses that may be contributing to the shortage of nurse faculty. Publications on WPB amongst nurses in South Africa has received attention, yet studies specifically on WPB of nurse faculty in South African universities when bullying is present appears to be overlooked. This study aims to analyse the construct of WPB within the South African nurse academic context; to contextualize the lived meaning thereof to inform the development of a situation-specific framework that describes and explains the phenomenon.

Rolean Godfrey

Title: The social construction of men’s masculine workplace identities in blue-collar, male dominated industries, occupations in South Africa

Promotors: Prof Anita Bosch and Prof Smaranda Boroş

The research seeks to explore the role of workplace gender performativity, hegemonic masculinity, and emotions in the identity work of men in traditionally male-dominated industries and occupations in South Africa. Currently, literature predominantly focuses on women’s gendered experience marginalising men’s heterogeneous experiences that often produce complex, fluid, multiple, ambiguous, and contradictory masculine identities.

Obaa Akua Konadu-Osei

Title: The development of positive intersectional work identities of women in male-dominated jobs

Promotors: Prof Anita Bosch and Prof Smaranda Boroş

This thesis explores how women build positive work identities in male-dominated industries within a collectivist context. This qualitative study is underpinned by three studies. The first study explores how local epistemologies can be utilised in conducting context-sensitive work identity research.  The second study explores how women navigate dominant identities and create alternative ways of existing in male-dominated spaces. The third study explores formal and informal structures in the workplace that support women’s upward mobility.

Kabelo Gildenhuys

Title: Mediating the competing discourses of dominant group members to support organisational inclusion

Promotors: Prof. Anita Bosch; Prof. Smaranda Boroş

To date most research in the field of management has focused on the discourses related to minority group members and the dilemma of workplace exclusion. Consequently, the theory related to achieving greater inclusion by specifically engaging dominant group members, a pivotal constituency for enabling sustainable inclusion, remains unsatisfactory. This research sets out to identify the competing discourses related to white men as dominant group members in organisations by drawing on the insights of social dominance theory.

Research Chair:

Conferences, scholarly publications, journal articles

1. Gildenhuys, K., Bosch, A., Boros, S. (2022). Disrupting the status quo discourse about dominant group members. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Conference, Cape Town, South Africa. (22-24 July).
2. Gildenhuys, K., Bosch, A., Boros, S. (2022). Competing discourses on dominant group members in the global north and south. Gender, Work and Organization (GWO) Conference & Colloquium, Bogota, Colombia. (21- 24 June).
3. Gildenhuys, K., Bosch, A., Boros, S. (2021). Dominant identities as agents for organizational inclusion [Presentation]. Proceedings of the 44th Virtual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), Montreal, Canada.
4. Godfrey, R., Bosch, A., Boros, S. (2022, July 22-24). The female gaze: The relational position of women in the construction of hegemonic masculinity [Paper presentation]. 15th Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference, Cape Town, South Africa https://www.edi-conference.org/index.php
5. Godfrey, R., Bosch, A., Boros, S. (2022, June 14-16). A social construction of men’s masculine identities in male dominated industries in South Africa [Paper Presentation]. Interdisciplinary conference on men and masculinities, University of Washington Tacoma, United States https://www.mensstudies.org/page-18191
6. Konadu-Osei, O. A., Boroş, S., & Bosch, A. (2022). Methodological Decolonisation and Local Epistemologies in Business Ethics Research. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-12.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05220-z
7. Konadu-Osei, O.A, Boros, S. , & Bosch, A. (2021, June 21-25) From Eve to Sisyphus: Exploring identity work strategies by women in blue-collar roles in male-dominated industries in South Africa [Conference presentation] 2021 African Faculty Development Workshop, Stellenbosch, South Africa. https://www.africaacademyofmanagement.org/application-instructions-afam-afdw-workshops-2021-deadline-extension
8. Konadu-Osei, O.A, Boros, S. , & Bosch, A. (2021, June 7-10) Beyond Western Philosophies: Exploring Ubuntu as a Complementary Philosophy in Work Identity Research in the South African Context [Conference presentation] 2021 Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) Conference, London, Canada. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/caas/conference2021/wednesday/10/