2022 Contributors

Contributors to the Women’s Report are experts on their respective topics and are invited to write about issues of importance related to the theme of the Report. The WR2022 focuses on the realities created for women by South Africa’s fiscal policy, and shows that much needs to be done with greater care and consideration of the facts of life in South Africa that hamper women’s advancement. Careful consideration of aspects of fiscal policy, including tax, social grants, retirement funding and gender-based budgeting, could to halt the downward spiral of odds that progressively stack up against women as they navigate life.

Dr Lee-Ann Steenkamp

Paper 1: Equal pay but unequal taxes? & Paper 2: Mind the gender pension gap!

Dr Lee-Ann Steenkamp is a tax and accounting lecturer at Stellenbosch Business School where she teaches on the MBA and the Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning. She is also an Extraordinary Professor in Tax at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Lee-Ann is a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher, the first woman from the Business School to receive this prestigious accolade. She obtained her PhD in Public Law from the University of Cape Town, wherein she examined the transition from the old Kyoto Protocol to the new Paris Agreement on Climate Change. She holds a Master’s degree in taxation and is a registered Master Tax Practitioner (SA)TM. Her research focuses on ‘green tax’ issues, including biodiversity conservation, the taxing of energy use in developing countries and, most notably, South Africa’s new carbon tax.

Lee-Ann supervises numerous MBA, MPhil Development Finance, and doctoral students, and frequently publishes in peer-reviewed journals. She is a contributing author to a number of books and university-prescribed textbooks, and presents at international conferences. Lee-Ann is Programme Director for the Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Planning, which is accredited by the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI). She advises on carbon tax policy matters, and chairs the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) Carbon Tax Subcommittee, which provides input to National Treasury, and serves on the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF). In addition, she is a member of the Steering Committee for the biennial International Conference on Clean Electrical Power held in Italy. Connect with Lee-Ann on LinkedIn and view more detail about her research here.

Prof. Ingrid Woolard

Paper 3: The role of social grants in economically enabling South African women

Ingrid Woolard is the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University, the first woman to hold this position. She is also a Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University and an Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town. She obtained her PhD in Economics at the University of Cape Town in 2002. She has previously worked at the National Treasury, Nelson Mandela University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Human Sciences Research Council and the University of Cape Town. Her areas of research interest include the measurement of poverty and inequality, unemployment, social protection and fiscal policy.

She is a Research Affiliate at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town, at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Bonn and at the Commitment to Equity Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans. She is strongly committed to providing research-led policy advice. From 2008 to 2014, she served on the Employment Conditions Commission which advises the South African Minister of Employment and Labour on making sectoral determinations concerning working conditions and minimum wages in sectors where collective bargaining is weak. From 2013 to 2018 she served on the Davis Tax Committee which advised six consecutive Ministers of Finance on tax reform.

Are you interested in contributing to the next Women’s Report? Do you have meaningful insights and research to share on women and their impact on business and society? We want to hear from you.

The Annual Women’s Report e-publication is proudly sponsored by the Stellenbosch Business School and is distributed in association with the South African Board for People Practices.