Closing the Gender Gap - How Learnerships Open Doors for South Africa's Young Women

Closing the Gender Gap: How Learnerships Open Doors for South Africa's Young Women

By Cynthia Banda, Head of Learning at SA Business School

South Africa's youth unemployment crisis is well-documented, and harrowing. What gets less attention is how unevenly that crisis falls on young women, particularly on young Black women from disadvantaged communities who simply have no pathway into further study and qualifications after school to improve their employment prospects. Learnerships, both employed and unemployed, offer one of the few proven routes past that barrier.

An unemployment crisis with a female face

South Africa's official unemployment rate stood at 32,7% in the first quarter of 2026, with youth carrying the heaviest burden. Among 15-24 year olds, unemployment reached 60,9% in that quarter, and among 25-34 year olds, it was a shocking 40,6%. Layer gender onto those figures and the picture worsens.

According to Stats SA, in the first quarter of 2026, 39,2% of women aged 15 to 24 were NEET (not in employment, education or training) against 36% of young men. Women's unemployment rate has also consistently run several percentage points above men's. In the second quarter of 2025, women's unemployment stood at 36%, against 31% for men, a gap of five percentage points. For young Black women specifically, unemployment has run even higher again, reaching close to 40% through 2025. What's striking is that this gap does not close with tertiary qualifications. Female graduates faced an unemployment rate of 15,0% in mid-2025, compared with 8,9% for male graduates, according to Stats SA. The gaps are widening on all fronts.

The affordability wall

Behind these numbers sits a structural problem: most young South Africans cannot afford tertiary education. University and TVET fees, accommodation, transport and the cost of simply surviving while studying place a formal qualification out of reach for millions of households, and household budgets in disadvantaged communities are disproportionately carried by women.

When money is tight, it is often young women, not young men, who are pulled out of the education pipeline first, to care for siblings, to work informally, or because a household chooses to invest its limited resources in a son's education over a daughter's. The result is a large pool of capable young women who leave school with a matric but no realistic path to a qualification that employers need or recognise.

This is the critical gap that learnerships are designed to close.

What is a learnership?

A structured, work-based learning programme, typically over 12-24 months. The learner undergoes theoretical and on-the-job training, learning practical skills directly related to a specific occupation – from IT to engineering to insurance to business process outsourcing to sales to retail and many more.

It leads to a registered qualification on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and is managed by the relevant SETA.

Central to skills upliftment in South Africa and in bringing young people onto the employment and career ladder.

Why learnerships make business sense

Learnerships make excellent business sense for the employer and learner:

Learnerships are developed by the industry, so the skills sets and outcomes are aligned to the requirements of the specific occupation and industry sector.

With the right L&D partner, every learnership can be customised to the business strategy, as long as it meets the requirements of notional hours and formative and summative assessments.

Qualifications are registered on the NQF, which means that employees are learning new skills and knowledge within a recognised qualification, which means improved standards, productivity and quality of work.

Learnerships earn points on the BEE Scorecard under both Employment Equity and Skills Development and there is a SARS Tax Rebate if the learnership is a registered with the Department of Labour and the agreement is registered with the SETA. The Tax Rebate is calculated per learner – a learnership for a disabled learner could translate into a R120k tax rebate for a 12-month learnership. There is an opportunity to make skills levy contributions work for the benefit of the company, its people and the communities in which it operates.

SETA discretionary and mandatory grants reward employers who submit a Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report, unlocking funding that can offset the cost of hosting learners.

Job prospects are imminently better for the learner, with sound theoretical and practical occupation-specific training backed by a nationally recognised qualification. Learnerships often result in permanent employment for the learner upon completion if they have performed well. For the employer, learnership graduates who have already been trained inside a business, and who understand its systems and culture, are typically faster to onboard into permanent roles than external hires.

Employed and unemployed learnerships

There are employed and unemployed learnerships, and the distinction matters for how corporate sponsors of learnerships get involved:

Employed learnerships place existing employees, often in entry-level or semi-skilled roles, into a structured learning programme while they continue working and earning. This is a strong tool for upskilling a company's own workforce and building a pipeline into supervisory or specialist roles.

Unemployed learnerships recruit young people who have no job at all, most often straight out of school or after a period of NEET status and place them into a company for the duration of the learnership. Learners earn a stipend, gain workplace experience, and work towards a qualification, all without paying tuition. For a young person from a disadvantaged community, this is often the first formal, paid opportunity they have ever had, and the first qualification they can complete without their family going into crippling debt.

Why this matters specifically for young women

Learnerships address several of the barriers that keep young women out of the labour market. They remove the cost barrier that pushes young women out of education first. They provide workplace experience, which matters given that nearly six in ten unemployed young people in South Africa have never held a job and therefore cannot show employers any track record. And because learnerships are structured and monitored through SETAs, they create a defensible pathway into industries, such as finance, engineering, technical trades and insurance, where women remain under-represented in more senior and higher-paid roles. Placing young women into learnerships in sectors beyond the traditionally "soft" occupations they are often channelled into is one of the more direct ways an employer can meaningfully shift, rather than simply comply, with its transformation commitments.

South Africa's youth unemployment numbers are not going to be solved by government programmes alone, and they are certainly not going to be solved by ignoring the fact that young women face a steeper climb than young men at every level of education.

Learnerships, both employed and unemployed, are one of the few mechanisms that address the cost barrier, the experience barrier and the qualification barrier simultaneously. The tools, the tax incentives and the funding structures already exist.

What is needed now is more corporates willing to open their doors and ensure that women get to participate and contribute from an equal playing field.

Ends…