Her & Now Report 2026/27: The Real Cost of a World Not Built for South African Women

South African women are resilient. But resilience should not be the price of simply navigating everyday life.

The second edition of the First for Women Her & Now Report, A World Built for Someone Else, looks beyond how South African women feel and asks a more difficult question: why are so many women still having to work around products, services and systems that do not reflect the realities of their lives?

Drawing on more than 6,000 South African women’s voices gathered since 2025, the research explores women’s experiences across safety, money, work, household responsibilities, relationships and trust. It reveals the very real cost of not being considered, measured not only in rands, but also in time, opportunity and the invisible work women perform every day. 

 

•             Read the full Her & Now Report 2026/27

 

More than 6,000 women. One powerful picture of life in South Africa

Now in its second year, Her & Now has gathered 6,558 completed survey responses across the two editions of the research.

Edition 2 combines quantitative survey data with open-ended responses and expert interviews to understand not only the challenges women face, but how the institutions, products and services around them respond to those realities.

The respondents represent different income levels, employment circumstances, household structures and communities across South Africa. Most respondents were between 25 and 44 years old, while the research included women from all nine provinces.

Rather than treating women's experiences as anecdotal, the research puts numbers behind many of the realities women have long described.

 

•    Download the full Her & Now Report to explore the research and methodology.

 

90.1% of women rarely or never feel safe walking alone after dark

Safety is one of the starkest findings in the report.

In the first edition of Her & Now, only 6% of women said they felt safe once the sun went down. Edition 2 digs deeper into how that lack of safety changes women's everyday behaviour.

The research found that 90.1% of women never or rarely feel safe walking alone after dark. Even during the day, 39.1% said they never or rarely feel safe walking alone.

Public transport presents another challenge. Only 18.6% of women overall feel mostly or always safe using public transport.

And these concerns do not simply affect how women feel. They change how women live.

The report found:

·       64.7% have stopped letting their children travel independently because of safety concerns.

·       47.4% have avoided going to a bank or ATM.

·       37.5% have avoided using public transport.

·       48.5% have avoided working late or accepting evening shifts.

For women, personal safety can influence everything from employment opportunities and mobility to how their children move through the world. 

 

Safety has a financial cost too

Feeling unsafe does not only restrict movement. It can cost money.

An overwhelming 79.5% of women said safety concerns have cost them money, whether through choosing an Uber instead of walking, paying for secure parking or investing in home security.

 

Lower-income women feel this pressure particularly often. Among women earning under R5,000 per month, 84.4% said safety costs them money regularly or occasionally.

 

Higher-income women, however, tend to spend more in absolute terms. Among women earning R50,000 or more, 32.8% reported spending more than R1,000 per month on safety-related costs.

These findings point to what the report describes as a kind of "safety tax": money women spend simply to move through everyday life with greater peace of mind. 

CTA: Read the full Her & Now Report to see how safety is reshaping the everyday lives of South African women.

 

Women want products and services designed around their reality

The research also asks whether the organisations women interact with actually understand them.

Only 11.5% of women said they generally feel considered by the systems and services around them.

Government services were the most commonly identified area where women feel like an afterthought, selected by 38% of respondents, followed by banking and financial services and healthcare at 35.6% each.

When a product or service does not fit their needs, women often do not wait around for the company to change.

56.4% simply stop using it and find an alternative.

Another 33.1% work around the problem themselves, while 22.1% complain or provide feedback.

For businesses, this is an important finding. Designing for women is not simply about representation in advertising. It can mean understanding how women actually earn, travel, care for families, manage their time and make financial decisions.

 

52.7% of women feel they are left to figure things out themselves

More than half of respondents, 52.7%, agreed that when a company or service lets them down, they are left to sort out the problem without meaningful help.

Among women living alone, that rises to 64.8%.

The stories shared in the research show what this can look like in practice: services available only during standard working hours, financial products designed around fixed monthly salaries, appointments that ignore caregiving responsibilities and safety concerns that are not always considered when women need assistance.

Interestingly, some of the places where women reported feeling most seen were not large institutions at all.

Women repeatedly pointed to local hairdressers and neighbourhood spaza shops, where relationships, flexibility and an understanding of individual circumstances can make customers feel recognised rather than processed.

The report's broader message is clear: being seen is not necessarily about having more technology or resources. It is about designing around people's real lives.

 

Almost one in three women often run out of money before month-end

Financial pressure remains another major theme.

32.8% of women said they often run short before the end of the month, while another 15.7% described themselves as in debt and struggling to keep up.

Only 14.7% said they were financially comfortable with some savings.

During the previous 12 months, financial pressure had caused:

• ·  47.9% to borrow money from family or friends.
• · 28.1% to go without food or reduce meals.
• ·   27.5% to skip or delay a healthcare appointment.
• ·   24.6% to be unable to pay school fees or buy school supplies.
• ·       22.4% to take out a loan to cover everyday expenses.
• ·       21.6% to cancel or be unable to afford insurance.

Single parents face particularly intense pressure. 36.1% of single parents had gone without food, compared with 28.1% across the overall sample, while 55.4% had borrowed from family or friends. 

 

What if your salary does not arrive neatly on the 25th?

Her & Now also exposes a disconnect between traditional financial products and the way many South African women actually earn money.

Only 11.8% of women said banks accommodate irregular or informal income very well, while 31% said banks accommodate it poorly or not at all.

Among women with irregular income, that negative response rises to 46%.

When a financial product fails them, 50.2% of women turn to family, while 33.4% manage the situation on their own.

One of the most repeated requests in the open-ended responses was for financial products that assess affordability based on actual cash flow rather than only a fixed monthly payslip, as well as repayment dates that better accommodate the dates on which people actually receive their income.

Where formal financial systems fall short, women are also building their own.

The stokvel repeatedly emerged as one of the ways women save, budget, buy groceries and create financial buffers for themselves and their families.

 

•           Download the Her & Now Report for the complete findings on South African women, money and financial services.

 

Women are earning, but they are still carrying most of the work at home

The report challenges another long-standing assumption about South African households.

Among women living with a partner and children, 47.6% are either the primary earner or an equal co-earner, while 48.7% say their partner earns more.

But earning responsibilities have not necessarily translated into equal domestic responsibilities.

Among partnered women with children:

·       75.8% mainly or mostly handle cooking and cleaning themselves.

·       69.2% mainly or mostly handle cleaning and laundry.

·       66.1% mainly or mostly handle daily childcare.

·       72.6% say the emotional labour of listening, organising and keeping the peace falls mainly or mostly to them.

·       Only 6.5% said their partner mainly or mostly handles daily childcare, while just 7.1% said their partner mainly or mostly carries the emotional labour.

The findings suggest that women's roles in household finances may have evolved faster than the division of domestic and emotional work. 

 

36% of women spend five or more hours a day on unpaid work

That invisible work carries a significant time cost.

Across the survey, 36% of women spend five hours or more every day on unpaid domestic and care work.

Among women caring for a child under five, this climbs to 48.4%.

Nearly one in five women in this group, 19.4%, spend more than eight hours a day on unpaid domestic and care work.

And formal employment does not necessarily replace other forms of work. 32.6% of women employed full-time also do informal work on the side.

Despite the scale of this contribution, 77.3% of women agree that formal institutions, including companies, banks, insurers and government, do not realise how much time and money their unpaid work saves or costs.

This feeling remains remarkably consistent across different household structures.

 

Trust has to be earned

The final part of the research asks where women place their trust.

Only 9.2% of respondents mostly or completely trust government and public services. Public healthcare stands at 19.4%, banks and financial institutions at 20.2%, and insurance companies at 20.2%.

By comparison, 39.3% mostly or completely trust other women in their personal networks.

Nearly half of women, 46.6%, have felt dismissed or not taken seriously by a product, service or institution. Among self-employed women, this rises to 57.1%.

Recommendations from other women consequently carry considerable weight. 67.4% say recommendations from women in their network influence their decisions "a lot" or "extremely".

When asked what would most increase their trust in a brand, the leading answer was simple: talk honestly about the challenges women face, selected by 57.1%.

Another 48.3% wanted products designed around their actual lives.

 

Women believe in the power of women

One of the strongest themes connecting both editions of Her & Now is sisterhood.

84.1% of respondents agree that meaningful change will come from women themselves rather than institutions.

When asked about the most powerful outcome of women supporting other women, 39.4% chose strong financial safety nets.

The research shows women creating support systems where formal structures fall short: stokvels, community safety networks, family support, group chats, shared knowledge and recommendations.

These are not simply stories of resilience. They demonstrate what women value in systems that genuinely work for them: flexibility, context, trust, responsiveness and an understanding of their actual lives.

 

What the 2026/27 Her & Now Report tells us

 

Taken together, the findings paint a complicated picture of women's lives in South Africa.

Women are earning and providing, yet still performing significant unpaid labour.

They are navigating financial systems that may not accommodate irregular income.

They are changing routes, spending money and restricting movement because they do not feel safe.

And when formal systems fall short, women repeatedly create their own ways of coping, saving, staying safe and supporting one another.

The challenge raised by Her & Now: A World Built for Someone Else is therefore bigger than asking women to continue being resilient.

It asks businesses, financial institutions, employers, government and other organisations to consider whether the systems they have created reflect the lives women are actually living.

For First for Women, understanding those realities is part of the commitment behind Her & Now: understanding her current world and remaining committed to building a better one. 

•     Read Her & Now Edition 2: A World Built for Someone Else

There is far more behind these numbers.

Explore the full research, women's first-hand experiences, demographic breakdowns and deeper findings in the First for Women Her & Now Report 2026/27.

Download the Her & Now Report 2026/27