New research on 240 South African professionals reveals gender is not the career barrier we thought it was, writes Dr Nuraan Agherdien. The real story is far more complicated — and more useful.
That is the uncomfortable finding from my recent study of more than 240 professionals across the country. It challenges everything we've been told about the glass ceiling – and it should change the way how we think about workplace equality.
I expected to find that gender was the primary barrier to career success. Instead, I found something far more complex: internal drive – confidence, ambition, self-belief – was the single strongest predictor of success, for both men and women. Organisational support like mentoring came second.
Gender, surprisingly, barely registered.
This does not mean patriarchy has vanished. Far from it. But it does mean we have been focusing on the wrong solutions.
Here is what makes this so complicated: South Africa remains deeply patriarchal. Some respondents openly described their organisations this way. More than 20% agreed that "a wife should obey her husband." Men are still seen as default leaders. Women still face pressure to prioritise family over career.
Yet when it comes to actual career outcomes, such as promotions, salaries and personal fulfilment, men and women reported remarkably similar experiences.
So how can patriarchy persist but not determine who succeeds? The answer lies in what we are not measuring.
What actually matters
The professionals I surveyed pointed to three critical factors:
-
Internal drive: Do you believe you can succeed? Are you ambitious? This mattered more than anything else.
-
External support: Not just from employers, but from families, communities, religious networks. Muslim participants, for instance, placed more weight on religious influences. Mixed-race respondents were more attuned to cultural expectations than White counterparts.
-
Organisational support: Mentoring, fair promotion practices, development opportunities. Here's the catch: most people knew these programmes existed. Almost none believed they'd actually benefited from them.
The study also revealed sharp differences based on age (older workers reported lower motivation), marital status (married professionals had different experiences than single ones), and parenting (children changed the game entirely).
One young Muslim participant, working at a logistics firm, said the support of family and friends helped to motivate her.
“My religion has its own set of principles that women should live by but society is progressing, and women have fought against many imbalances in society,” she said. “It has not truly adapted but I think men have become more accustomed to a woman who is not just a mother but also a provider.”
Why we have been getting it wrong
The problem with most diversity initiatives is that they treat gender as if it operates in isolation. They do not account for how age, race, religion and family status intersect to create wildly different experiences.
A 28-year-old single Black woman faces different barriers than a 45-year-old married Indian mother. Treating them both as simply “women who need support” misses the point entirely.
Worse, well-meaning policies can backfire. When we create special programmes "for women" we risk reinforcing the very stereotypes we are trying to dismantle – that women need extra help, that they are not competing on the same terms.
The gap between policy and practice is the real scandal here. Companies have mentoring programs that do not mentor. They have promotion processes that are not actually fair. They have development opportunities that mysteriously evaporate when people try to use them.
Here is what should happen instead:
-
Make support universal but flexible. Everyone needs mentoring and development, but a parent returning from leave needs different support than a young professional building expertise.
-
Focus on implementation, not announcements. Stop measuring how many policies you have. Start measuring how many people actually benefit from them.
-
Recognise that it is complex. South Africa’s workforce is diverse across multiple dimensions. One-size-fits-all solutions will not work.
We have spent decades asking whether men or women are more likely to get ahead. That may have been the wrong question.
The right question is more likely to be: Are we creating workplaces where motivation actually matters more than demographics? Where the person with drive and ability wins, regardless of gender, race, age or family status?
My research suggests we are not there yet. Not because gender discrimination has vanished, but because we have been so focused on gender that we have missed the other barriers holding people back.
If we want workplaces that actually work for everyone, we need to stop treating diversity as a gender problem and start treating it as a human one.
-
Dr Nuraan Agherdien is Acting Director of School: Industrial and Organisational Psychology and Human Resources, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha