Firms engaged in international trade account for a large share of South Africa's output and employment. Therefore, their behaviour has potentially large effects on national outcomes including gender inequality. In this paper, we test whether the gender wage gap (GWG) of trading firms differs from that of domestic firms based on a growing literature that has outlined how the special characteristics of trading firms could lead to such a different GWG. Using a unique employer-employee matched data panel from 2011 to 2016 for South Africa based on novel tax record data and employing various fixed effects regressions, we find that the GWG of trading firms is significantly larger than that of domestic firms. This holds even when controlling for unobserved individual and firm fixed effects that account for factors such as worker education or firm profitability. We also find that firms which both import and export (a crude proxy for foreign-owned firms) behave more equally than other trading firms. This could be driven by foreign owned firms that impose their more equal domestic pay structures on their South African affiliates and would emphasize the role of foreign investment for gender equality.

Orientation: Marriage formalises gender roles in society and as such has a significant impact on the labour force. The institution does, however, change over time, which makes it important to continually assess the impact that it has.Research purpose: In this article, the impact of marital status on employment is gauged.Motivation for the study: Marriage is arguably one of the most engrained institutions in modern society. Understanding the link between the marriage institution and employment could be essential in understanding the social and economic externalities that policy could have.Research design, approach and method: Logistic regressions are used to analyse what the relationship between different marital statuses and employment is.Main findings: The findings show that women are least likely to be employed when they are married, whereas men are most likely to be employed when they are married.Practical/managerial implications: Marriage clearly influences the labour market outcomes of women differently than those of men. This is an important certitude, especially for policy-makers who have to consider how their policies will differently affect men and women, and thereby how those policies will either work against or for gender equality.Contribution/value-add: This article attempts to uncover the link between marital status and employment in South Africa and thereby realise the potential implications of changes in marriage patterns on employment patterns.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project Southern Africa-Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED).

We study an often-overlooked factor behind gender inequality: globalization, in particular, foreign direct investment (FDI). Building on a growing literature that studies the impact of trade and FDI on gender inequality, we test whether foreign-owned firms exhibit a different gender wage gap (GWG) than firms with domestic ownership, using unique South African administrative matched employer-employee data. We find that the unconditional GWG is substantially smaller in foreign-owned firms than in firms with domestic ownership. We also find that for foreign-owned firms this difference is reversed once we control for a large set of fixed effects. In our preferred specification, foreign-owned firms have a larger GWG of about 2.4 percentage points. The share of women employed in foreign firms is lower than in firms with domestic ownership, in contrast to similar studies, which may indicate an underlying inequality in opportunities for women within a developing country context.