Occupational Gender Segregation affects women development

Abstract: Gender occupation segregation is more and more obvious in the tourism industry. Male and female in tourism employment still inequality. This paper explores the issue of women in tourism employment. The paper aim to analyze the reasons of women in tourism employment are treated fairly, and how to alleviate unfair treatment, as well as the importance of keep gender equality in the industry employment.

Key words: gender occupation segregation, women, employment, inequality, factors, significance.

Discussion Paper
Employment in the hospitality and tourism area is generally associated with lower quality of employment opportunities than other industries (Garcia-Pozo et al., 2012 and Lacher and Oh, 2012). One of the most prominent problem is the existence of gender segregation phenomenon of career or job, although employment rate of women continued to rise (Romos et al, 2002), women continue to encounter a host of barriers attributable to labor market discrimination, still being treated unfairly and lead women at a disadvantage in tourism employment status. Women always responsible for low pay, low skills, temporary informal, part-time jobs. They have litter career development opportunities in the workplace and in a bad work environment.

The reasons of women being treated unfairly have several aspects: first, people’s traditional thoughts. They think that women’s role is responsible for family. Like birth, housework. And this thought lead to the role of women employment is regarded as representatives of the family role. Furthermore, cause employment discrimination in the tourism industry. Even some company roles or employers’ protestations refused employ women. To the certain extend also hurt the dignity of women. Second, in some developing countries, women are more the lack of adequate education, training and access to market information than men, so lead to the gender inequality in the labor marker. Third, laws and regulations. Present legal systems have a lot of defect to protect women’s right and interest, as well as to ensure equality between men and women. Last, women own reasons. Women have a tendency to have social inclinations toward value and redistributive objective, and this may restrain them from seeking after a more resolute objective of amplifying wage. Furthermore, women are less likely to negotiate for higher compensation and promotion (Bowles et al, 2007; Babcock and laschever, 2003), which results in women remaining in lower paying occupation.

Gender inequality and discrimination brought the negative impact of the tourism industry and women. Firstly, caused many women lost their jobs, lost the condition of economic independence, gender segregation in tourism employment more obvious. Secondly, employment discrimination makes women inferior human capital investment, human capital investment of sexual orientation affect women’s ability to improve, further increase employment discrimination. Meanwhile, also hurt the women and even the society to women’s human capital investment, coupled with the women less training opportunities at work, certainly bound to increase the degree of discrimination against women, in a vicious circle situation, hindered the improvement of women’s quality and economic development. Made women stay in a same development stage, cannot get the rise and development of space. Furthermore, gender segregation phenomenon more serious will influence the development of social economy. Occupation gender segregation limit the men and women workers were in their traditional occupation, the women locked in conformity with their ability of position, not free and reasonable flow, was denied the chance of talent, it is not only related to fair question, and also involve the work efficiency and quality, lead to a decline overall efficiency, influence the development of social economy.

Keep gender equality is not only important for tourism industry, also for other industries. Because we cannot predict losses caused by gender inequality. Although tourism has structural inequality, but tourism can greatly stimulate the social development, then to empower women, to realize the economic empowerment, education empowerment and political empowerment. So keep the gender equality especially for women’s empowerment have a significant in tourism industry. People can from the following several aspects to mitigate gender inequality. First, to establish and improve the labor market. A perfect the market economic system and development of good labor market is to eliminate the basis and premise of labor employment discrimination. And the countries and relevant organizations should strengthen the construction of the relevant policy and regulation.
Then increase the number of women in tourism decision-making role. Consider the history and previous researches, women are tend to be at disadvantage position, need to special for women to achieve gender equality in order to adjust the imbalance of power. In tourism planning, tourism policy of giving women more rights management, make the women have the same rights, share equal rights and interests in the development of tourism.

Women occupy a significant position in the tourism industry worldwide. The capacity of tourism to engage women socially, politically and economically is especially pertinent in creating locales where women may confront the best hardships and inequalities (UNWTO, 2010). So in order to better development for women, should balance and ease gender segregation in all industries.




Reference
Garcia-Pozo, A., Campos-Soria, J., Sanchez-Ollero, J. and Marchante-Lara, M. (2012). The regional wage gap in the Spanish hospitality sector based on a gender perspective. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(1), pp. 266-275

Romos, V., Rey-Maqueira, J. and Tugores, M. (2002). Análisis empírico de discriminación por razón de género en una economía especializada en turismo. Annals of Tourism Research en Español, 4 (1) (2002), pp. 239–258

Babcock, L. and Laschever, S. (2003). Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and Gender Divide. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

UNWTO, (2010). Global Report on Women in Tourism 2010 [online] Available from http://ethics.unwto.org/content/global-report-women-tourism-2010
[Accessed 16 April 2016]

Firstly the author of this paper must be commended, not only did they address an array of challenges that women face today in the tourism industry; they also commented on how addressing gender inequality can empower women and transform the tourism industry and more broadly, society as a whole. It is for these reasons why this paper has been chosen to be commented upon. It also shares similar themes with my own paper about how women can be empowered through tourism if given equal opportunities to men and if traditional ideas of gender roles are challenged.

Firstly the author addresses the traditional thoughts of the gender roles of women and how this can lead to the segregation of men and women and ultimately discrimination. Although an insightful paragraph it would have been interesting to read more about these gender roles and where they originate from to help contextualise the paper. Duffy et al, 2015 illustrates how ideas of Machismo and Marianismo have been deep rooted in societies, and still are in developing countries. The ideology refers to men being the sole providers of land, wealth and protection. The idea of Marianismo also promotes women to be subservient and simply carry out domestic duties (Duffy et al, 2015). This ideology could have perhaps been applied to the tourism industry by commenting on how women are often confined to domestic jobs such as housekeeping where as men are so often most prevalent in high responsibility managerial roles (Baum, 2013)

The author later goes on to highlight the negative impacts of occupation gender segregation. This has resonance with the idea of occupational image from Ashcraft, 2007. Both the author and Ashcraft,2007 discuss how women, regardless of their talents can be restricted and held back from success by pre conceptions of who and who cannot attain a certain career. To expand on this further the author could have perhaps mentioned the gradual changes of gender roles in society and how perceptions of women are changing and access to certain careers is being improved. This could then have been linked with the authors articulate final paragraph which states how beyond the tourism industry, addressing issues of gender occupation segregation can ultimately benefit the whole of society.

In conclusion the author had made valid points regarding stereotypes and perceived gender roles of women within the tourism industry. They then discussed the issue of gender occupation segregation and how this can affect the industry and society. This paper has inspired the reader to question if the negative social and economic impacts of gender discrimination were more visible in the industry, would gender discrimination still exist?


References

Ashcraft, K. (2007). Appreciating the ‘work’ of discourse: occupational identity and difference as organizing mechanisms in the case of Airline Pilots. Feminism Psychology, 10, 2. Available [PDF] at: http://dcm.sagepub.com/content/1/1/9.full.pdf+html . Accessed on 11th March 2016.

Baum, T. (2013). International perspectives on women and work in hotels, catering and tourism. Geneva: ILO. Available [PDF] at: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/dgreports/gender/documents/publication/wcms_209867.pdf . Accessed 15th April 2016.

Duffy, L., Kline, C., Mowatt, R., Chancellor, C. (2015). Women in Tourism: Shifting gender ideology in the DR. Annals of Tourism Research, 52:72-86