There is no fair competition for women workers in South Africa. All job adverts stating “BEE Position” without stating a salary range are fake. Why?
No Fair Competition for Women Workers in South Africa
There is no fair competition for women workers in South Africa when employers conceal salary ranges, demand previous payslips and use candidates’ existing earnings to determine future pay.
Job adverts marked “BEE position” but published without a salary range raise an important question: is the employer genuinely advancing employment equity, or merely using transformation language while withholding the information candidates need to negotiate fairly?
Salary secrecy weakens competition for women, particularly Black women who have historically experienced unequal access to employment, promotion and fair remuneration.
Lack of Competition for Women Can Drive Wages Down
Fair labour-market competition requires employers to compete openly for workers. That means attracting candidates through transparent salaries, benefits, working conditions and career opportunities.
When employers hide salaries and ask applicants to disclose previous payslips, that competitive process is weakened. Instead of valuing the position and the candidate’s skills, an employer may simply use the applicant’s current salary as the starting point for an offer.
This can carry historical underpayment from one job into the next.
The Competition Commission should recognise workers as essential market participants and examine how employer power affects wages. Payslip Bansa has previously argued that the Commission’s approach protects labour market inequality in South Africa by failing to give sufficient attention to competition for workers and employer monopsony power.
What is Unfair Labour Market Competition for Women Workers?
Competition for women workers becomes unfair when job applicants must disclose sensitive salary information while employers refuse to disclose what they are prepared to pay.
This creates a one-sided negotiation:
- The employer knows the position’s budget.
- The employer knows the applicant’s previous salary.
- The applicant does not know the available salary range.
- The employer can base its offer on past earnings rather than the value of the work.
For women who have already been underpaid, compulsory payslip disclosure can reproduce existing inequality. A lower salary in one position may become the benchmark for the next position, regardless of the applicant’s experience, qualifications or market value.
Women Face Unequal Access to Employment
Women generally face greater barriers to entering and remaining in South Africa’s labour market.
Statistics South Africa reported that 47% of South African women were economically inactive in 2022, compared with 35.6% of men. Statistics SA also reported that the unemployment rate for women remained above the national average between 2012 and 2022.
These inequalities affect women’s bargaining power. When suitable vacancies are scarce, applicants may feel unable to refuse intrusive salary-history requests or challenge employers that conceal remuneration.
Women Are More Likely to Be Unemployed or Underpaid
Underpayment is economically damaging and deeply dehumanising. It reduces lifetime earnings, retirement savings, financial independence and access to economic opportunities.
South Africa’s Employment Equity Act prohibits unfair discrimination in remuneration between employees of the same employer performing the same, substantially similar or equal-value work. However, job applicants still face limited transparency during recruitment and salary negotiations.
This gap allows previous pay inequality to influence future employment offers before a person even begins the new job.
Salary Secrecy Undermines Competition for Women
Truworths previously stated that “advertising employment opportunities without a salary range is not an unusual practice in South Africa.”
Common practice is not necessarily fair practice.
A job advert without a salary range prevents applicants from assessing whether the opportunity is appropriate before investing time in an application, interview or assessment process. This is particularly unfair when the employer later demands detailed information about the candidate’s current remuneration.
Other jurisdictions are moving towards greater transparency. Since 1 November 2022, covered employers in New York City have been required to include a good-faith pay range in advertisements for jobs, promotions and transfers.
South African workers deserve a serious public discussion about similar protections.
Take our Pay Secrecy poll and have your say.
Why “BEE Position” Adverts Should Include Salary Ranges
A job advertised as a “BEE position” appears to target employment-equity candidates. If the salary is concealed, however, applicants cannot determine whether the employer is offering fair market-related remuneration.
The absence of a salary range creates several risks:
- Transformation language may attract historically disadvantaged candidates without guaranteeing fair pay.
- Employers may base offers on applicants’ previous salaries.
- Candidates performing comparable work may receive materially different offers.
- Women may unknowingly apply for positions that pay less than their skills and experience justify.
- Existing racial and gender pay gaps may be carried into new employment relationships.
Calling a vacancy a “BEE position” does not, by itself, make the recruitment process equitable. Genuine employment equity should include transparent, consistent and defensible remuneration practices.
Payslip Requests Can Suppress Competition for Women
Many application forms require jobseekers to submit payslips before the employer discloses the salary range. Applicants are therefore expected to reveal sensitive information about another employer’s remuneration practices while receiving little or no equivalent information in return.
Some employers make it compulsory for applicants to submit payslips. The South African Board for People Practices has also defended payslip requests as a legitimate recruitment practice.
Payslip Bansa disputes that position.
When employers obtain and use competition-sensitive payslip information, they may avoid competing openly for talent. Instead of setting remuneration according to the position’s value, an employer can offer only a limited increase on what the applicant already earns.
This practice deserves scrutiny under employment, privacy and competition principles. Whether a specific practice is unlawful will depend on the facts and applicable legislation, but its potential to perpetuate wage inequality should not be ignored.
South Africa Needs Fair Competition for Women Workers
South Africa cannot achieve meaningful employment equity while salary secrecy and compulsory payslip disclosure remain embedded in recruitment.
Fair competition for women requires employers to:
- Publish genuine salary ranges in job advertisements.
- Determine remuneration according to the role’s value.
- Stop using salary history to reproduce previous underpayment.
- Apply consistent and transparent salary criteria.
- Give candidates enough information to negotiate fairly.
- Audit remuneration practices for racial and gender disparities.
Salary transparency will not eliminate workplace inequality by itself. It can, however, reduce information imbalances, strengthen applicants’ bargaining power and make it harder to conceal unjustifiable pay differences.
If employers genuinely want to advance Black women in the workplace, they should compete openly and fairly for their skills. A “BEE position” advertised without a salary range is not transparent employment equity—it is another demand that women negotiate in the dark.
Infographic: 6 Ways Recruitment is Anti-competition
