One of the important features of entrepreneurship in South Africa, is the amount of energy invested in supporting women to start-up businesses. As an orientation to why this is important, several business development practitioners have argued that “more men are employers, and most women are self-employed (meaning they employ no other person). The Quarterly Labour Force Survey provides data to verify the trend, but does raise some questions for further interrogation.
The charts below provides the status of employment for men and women using the 2nd quarter (2011) Labour Force Data.

 Initial Interpretation

These chart provides data for the employed in South Africa in terms of employee, employer, own account worker (self-employed, and not employing anyone else) and unpaid member of the household. The data is calculated as a percentage for each gender. It shows the following:

• The majority (over 80%) of males and females that are employed, are employees in a company.
• A small number of women (2,9%) identified themselves as employers, compared to 7,8% of men.
• More women (10,3%) than men (8,6%) as a percentage of their gender are own-account workers (i.e. self-employed and having no employees).
• Unsurprisingly, more women (1,25) provide unpaid work than men (o.4%)

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