Abstract
South Africa’s Apartheid regime deeply entrenched racial and gender inequalities amongst South Africans, which negatively affected all spheres of the economy, the working environment as well as society.
However, since the dawn of democracy more than two decades ago, South Africans have experienced changes in the landscape of employment. This has been mainly due to numerous legislation that were implemented to redress previous unfair discrimination in the workplace. Recently, researcher have identified slow progress in transformation of the working environment. This article is based on a literature analysis on the state of gender and racial diversity in the workplace, the barriers that are hindering the progression of women and blacks in the working place as well as the strategic methods adopted to retain women and blacks in the working environment.
The results from the analysis indicate that legislation on its own is not sufficient to efficiently achieve diversity in the working environment. Organisation and countries need to also implement other strategic programs in order to achieve this goal.
The outcomes from this study are significant for South African regulators, as they provide justification for increased efforts to transform or diversify the South African working environment, particularly since some studies have recognised that diversity can have a positive impact in an organisation.