On 6 August, Statistics South Africa published Gender Series Volume XIII, which notes that unpaid household care “remains insufficiently recognised and inadequately reflected in conventional measures of economic activity”. The National Debt Counsellors (NDC) is drawing attention to its financial equivalent. In many South African homes, one person tracks what is due when, decides what gets paid and what waits, and absorbs the gap when the two do not meet. More often than not, that person is a woman, and it happens whether or not she is the highest earner.
Census data shows the proportion of South African households headed by women rose from 37.8% in 1996 to 49.5% in 2022, while women’s median monthly earnings in 2024 stood at about 82% of men’s. Volume XIII found female-headed households were more likely to care for larger numbers of children and to live in extended and multigenerational homes.
“The mental load is invisible by definition,” says René Moonsamy, Director at the National Debt Counsellors. “The financial load is different. When a month falls short, the shortfall gets covered with credit, and that credit is recorded, by a credit bureau, in one person’s name. A woman can hold a household together for a decade, and the only formal record of that work will be her credit profile.”
On credit, the picture runs counter to a widely held assumption. Volume XII found female-headed households hold fewer credit cards than male-headed households, at 6.3% against 9.7%, and less than half as many mortgages, at 4.9% against 9.1%. Yet they are more likely to be up to date with repayments, and more likely to live in fully paid-off homes.
The costs that make up the load are rarely dramatic. A month might include groceries and school levies, a taxi fare, a prescription for an ageing parent, and a contribution towards a relative’s funeral that could not be declined. Repeated every month, they stretch a household budget past its limit, and the gap is usually closed with whatever credit is available, be it a retail account, credit card, a personal loan, or a short-term loan.
Moonsamy shares four practical steps households can take to make the load visible and share it more evenly:
- Write the household ledger down. Not a budget, but a single page showing who actually pays for what each month, including the contributions nobody itemises.
- Treat extended-family support as a budget line, not an ad hoc decision. It is often the largest unplanned expense in a household.
- Watch for recurring short-term credit use. The same credit covering the same gap every month is a structural shortfall, not a spending habit.
- Know whose name the accounts are in, because that person carries the full credit consequence alone. A free tool such as Finance 365 shows what lenders can see.
The load is not exclusive to women. Men in single-earner and caregiving roles face comparable pressure, and the same principles apply.
“Women are managing more, with less, and still paying it back,” adds Moonsamy. “The default assumption when someone falls behind is carelessness with money. The evidence does not support that. Whatever is going wrong here, it is not discipline, and asking for help is not an admission of failure. Debt review is a legal protection under the National Credit Act.”