Equity Index for South Africa

In the ongoing struggle to ingrain transformation throughout South Africa, one of the aspects that still needs attention is the demographic (or equity) profile of institutions. While demographics are not the only aspect of transformation, it remains one of the most important factors. It is par ticularly difficult to gauge the improvement in equity profile over a defined period. As an example, consider a hypothetical organisation X. We assume that X's racial profile constituted 70% Black African, 2% Coloured, 4% Indian and 24% White staff in 2004. We further assume that the racial profile changed to 72% Black African, 1% Coloured, 2% Indian and 25% White staff in 2009. While the percentage of Black African staff increased, so did the percentage of White staff. By simply looking at the percentage change in each category, we cannot determine whether the racial profile of X improved or worsened from 2004 to 2009. In the above example we were concerned with the improvement in racial profile for a single organisation. However, one could also consider the relative racial or gender profiles of different organisations (either in a par ticular sector or nationally). A similar difficulty would be encountered in answering this latter question. We show how a single numerical quantity - the Equity Index - will be able to answer these questions unambiguously.