Abstract
The main purpose of this study is to investigate women’s perceptions of gender equality employee engagement programmes in the corporate environment in South Africa. The reason this research is unique is due to gender equality being such a prominent topic worldwide and employee engagement research being quite scarce in South Africa. The population for this study is all women working in the corporate environment in South Africa and the research was conducted via a quantitative methodology to describe and explore women’s perceptions by utilising an online survey using LinkedIn. Due to this being a minor dissertation, the sample is not a representative sample as the 188 women who participated cannot proportionally and adequately represent all women in the corporate environment in South Africa The concepts discussed in this study identifies that organisations are having to evolve from an employee engagement, employee well-being and gender equality perspective. Organisations are having to meet the global and local demands by being more employee-centric and demonstrating their care for employees in multiple ways. Historically, organisations typically only looked at the bottom line as a measure for success however, in order for them to be sustainable they are having to take care of their most important assets, their employees, in various ways. For the women of the world, multiple global organisations such as the United Nations and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) play a vital role in illuminating the gender inequality issues women experience both personally and professionally and despite these organisations, there is little evidence that circumstances have changed for women. Among the sample of women who participated in this study, they perceived that women in the corporate environment in South Africa were still not treated equally in comparison to their male counterparts. It can be speculated that this is largely due to the patriarchal mindset of South Africans and therefore this could be one of the causes of equality issues for women in the workplace. Based on the research and the perceptions of the sample, it is evident that organisations operating in South Africa still have a lot of work to do in bridging the gender equality gap.
M.A. (Strategic Communication)