“Women earn 27% less than men,” the South African distributor of Korean car maker Hyundai recently tweeted.

Based on this disparity, Hyundai South Africa offered 100 South African women a R27 000 discount (about USD$2 000) on a new car.

A number of people questioned the statistic. “I wonder who’s this feminist who came up with this false info,” tweeted one person.

“This is a myth. We are paid equal for the same job, and it is illegal if this discrimination occurs,” offered another.

Is this statistic based on sound research? We set out to investigate.

Statistic not global but ‘very much South African’

The statistic was a “global average” from the 2017 Pulse of the People report run by market research firm Ipsos, the car distributor clarified in a subsequent tweet.

Mari Harris, a director and political analyst at Ipsos, confirmed that the statistic was from their report. Pulse of the People contains a list of questions that the organisation runs every six months as part of a study called Ipsos Khayabus.

The 2017 analysis was conducted between 23 April and 22 May, but the report is not publicly available.

However, the figure was not in fact a global estimate as Hyundai South Africa said, but rather “very much South African”, Harris told Africa Check. 

‘Women earn about 73% of what men earn’

Ipsos South Africa interviewed 3 598 employed people nationally across various occupations and in both urban and rural areas.

“We conduct face-to-face in-home interviews in the homes and home languages of randomly chosen South Africans,” Harris told Africa Check.

People who did not share information about their incomes were excluded the analysis. Some 37.6% of respondents declined to answer questions about their income – possibly because they feared the tax authorities, Harris said.

The results were then weighted and projected to a total of 38.3-million South Africans aged 15 years and older.

Their analysis found that the average personal income for men was R9 222.16 per month, while that for women was R6 688.80 per month.

“Women earn about 73% of what men earn (on average),” Harris explained. From this, Ipsos concluded that women earn 27% less than men.

Women earn 23% less – Stats SA

How does this compare to other studies of earning differences between men and women?

The executive manager for labour statistics at Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), Peter Buwembo, told Africa Check that the latest figures on earnings could be found in the bureau’s Labour Market Dynamics Survey. This survey uses data from Quarterly Labour Force Surveys, during which 30 000 households across the country are interviewed.

Stats SA estimated that men earned a median income of R3 500 per month while women earned R2 700 per month in 2015. The “median income” is the value where half of people’s income falls above it and the other half falls below.

Based on this data, women earned 23% less than men.

‘Average incomes tend to be considerably higher’

While the disparity in earnings provided by Stats SA and Ipsos data (23% versus 27%) are relatively similar, the differences in earnings reported for men and women differ significantly.

This could be due to the difference between average and median incomes, Martin Wittenberg, a professor in the school of economics at the University of Cape Town, told Africa Check.

“Averages tend to be considerably higher than medians because high earners earn so much more than everyone else, meaning just a few individuals raise the average wage appreciably,” he said. (Note: The median wage gap between men and women further varies – it is wider for both low and high earners and narrower at the middle.) 

2015 data from the National Income Dynamic Study also showed both a median and average income disparity, Wittenberg said, calculating 25% for the former. The study, conceived by the department of planning, monitoring and evaluation, tracks changes in the lives of individual South Africans over time.

Discrimination plays a role

There are a number of different factors which lead to men and women in South Africa earning at different levels, experts told Africa Check.

“Part of the difference in earnings between men and women arises because men and women have different productive characteristics,” Colette Muller, a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu Natal’s school of accounting, economics and finance explained. 

“[Men and women] typically work in different occupations and different industries associated with different rates of pay and benefits.”

As an example, Muller pointed to South Africa women dominating the informal sector, part-time employment and domestic work.

“This type of work is typically associated with low pay.”

“Discrimination against women, where they are underpaid despite being equally qualified to men” also contributes to income disparity, associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s school of economics and business sciences, Uma Kollamparambil, told Africa Check.

But Muller noted that teasing out “how much of the gender pay gap in South Africa is as a result of discrimination as opposed to other factors is quite difficult to do”.

Conclusion: Research backs car maker’s gender pay gap claim

A South African car dealership recently claimed that women earn 27% less than men.

The figure was based on 2017 data from a South African market research firm. The study found that men earned an average income of R9 222.16 per month compared to the R6 88.80 earned by women.

Data from South Africa’s statistics bureau also found a gender pay gap of 23% in 2015, but this was for median income.

While the actual size of the gap differs based on individual study characteristics, research consistently shows a notable difference in what women and men take home. 

Given this, we rate Hyundai’s claim mostly correct.

Researched by Gopolang Makou, Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website.