Gender inequality with regards to employment within the tourism industry

Abstract
This essay will focus on the discussion and analysis of gender inequality within the tourism industry. Women working in the tourism industry are often given low paying and skilled jobs due to their gender.

Keywords: gender inequality, low paid and skill jobs, tourism industry

Summary
This essay focuses on discussing and analyzing the phenomenon of gender inequality in tourism and the hidden dangers of this phenomenon. Furthermore, the development of reasonable solutions to control this phenomenon according to various aspects of tourism. Through history, it can be found that gender inequality does not only happen in modern society. There are more or less gender inequalities in many areas of work, especially in the tourism industry. This is because, in many countries the tourism ventilation department is considered by others to be a work industry mainly composed of women (Costa, Carvalho, & Breda, 2011; I. Carvalho, etc.). Despite the fact that the tourism industry has given many women a job opportunity. However, many of them have been treated unfairly, such as low salaries and jobs. Therefore, this article will take the hotel industry in several popular tourist countries as an example to further illustrate the situation of women in the current tourism industry. According to the survey, gender inequality is particularly serious in the hotel industry in these countries. For example, most women can only be responsible for cleaning or cleaning services, they are usually assigned to some bad positions or low-paying jobs (Sigüenza, Brotons & Huete, 2013). They do not have the opportunity to get involved in management work, a phenomenon known as occupational segregation. This article raises an abundance of hidden dangers in which, this phenomenon may bring. These types of hidden danger will not only involve the company, but also the society and even the country. For this reason, the improvement of gender inequality is crucial for every business and country. According to existing literatures, the main reason for the unequal treatment of many married women is the lack of decision-making power in the family. Women's decision-making power directly affects their position in the family (EQUALITY IN TOURISM, 2019). Therefore, in this article, we will start from the perspective of how to improve women's decision-making power for women who have been eliminated by society or are about to be eliminated. In other words, providing ways in which, women can use to strive for more rights. As the tourism industry has a unique influence on women, the following will also provide solutions for women in the case of tourism. For example, taking some successful female travel entrepreneurs as an example, the mental power of these female entrepreneurs is used to improve women's work enthusiasm. From the perspective of education and knowledge, it is very important for tourism companies to provide more educational resources and health knowledge to women, which is related to the country's child mortality and fertility rate. From the perspective of employment opportunities, tourism companies should provide some training courses for women who have not worked for a long time. While giving them job opportunities, they should also take into account their family factors, and specific solutions are presented below. Tourism enterprises should also make rational use of the strengths that women have developed and untapped, which not only can bring more competitive advantages to enterprises but can also win more rights for women. In addition to the tourism sector, the help of government departments is equally important, through some new policies or means to achieve. Nevertheless, this paper is not only about discussing the issue of unequal treatment for men and women, but also wants to raise awareness for women to get more recognition within the society. There are many potential forces on them that have not yet been tapped. However, since there are very few articles or literatures that have been discussed in depth so far, this paper aims to call for more people to discover the existence of this phenomenon and to improve it in time.





Reference list

Costa, C., Carvalho, I., & Breda, Z. (2011). Gender inequalities in tourism employment. The Portuguese case. Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, 15, 37–52. [Accessed 15 May 2019].

Sigüenza, M., Brotons, M., & Huete, R. (2013). The evolution of gender inequality in tourism employment in Spain. [Accessed 15 May 2019].

Equalityintourism.org. (2019). Why gender matters – Equality in Tourism. [online] Available at: https://equalityintourism.org/why-gender-matters/ [Accessed 15 May 2019].

I choose to comment on this particular paper due to my own key interest in the topic at hand. I find the concept of this paper extremely important and one of which there is a clear need for recognition in relation to the tourism industry. Gender inequality is a vast, sensitive topic in any form of employment generally, but tourism work is a platform affected drastically and can have extremely detrimental consequences for women worldwide.

The author rightly so points out occupational segregation and the difficulty to which women have in occupying managerial roles. This emphasises that the current situation of women in tourism work takes place mainly in housekeeping roles, which has been created through dated traditions relating to women’s positions in their household, exploiting perceived ‘feminine’ imagery, sanctioning women to the likes of the kitchen and cleaning (Aynalem et al, 2016; Carvalho et al, 2019).

Although the tourism industry can often be perceived as gender divided, there are a large amount of opportunities available for women all over the world; many women need tourism work to cope with poverty and gain a sense of empowerment (Carvalho et al, 2019). The UNWTO and UN Women global report (2011) is an excellent example of the worldwide benefits that tourism can have in terms of providing women with careers to provide income for their families and communities. Tourism does not only implement standard employment, but sets the foundations for female entrepreneurs to have their enterprises exist in the industry. Entrepreneurship can provide women with gender-neutral grounds in terms of potential and allows women to flourish in enterprise, employment and empowerment. Women entrepreneurship is crucial for the industry, contradicting gender stereotyping and inequalities, proving that tourism does not always have an unfavourable affect on women (UNWTO and UN Women, 2011).

In closing, the author has put together a satisfying list of the barriers and consequences to which women face when working in the industry and the importance of facing inequality head on. With strong references and a good grasp of the literature, the author has been able to portray the positives and negatives which tourism work has on women and provides an outlook for future development. The paper serves mainly to look at the obstacles which women face and only briefly takes into account the importance of tourism, which would develop the paper further in a contrasting way. By looking into the beneficial side of tourism work, it is clear women are becoming resistant to matters of gender inequality, preforming well in their roles and taking an opportunity to grow into successful tourism careers.


Aynalem, S., Birhanu, K. and Tesefay, S. (2016) Employment Opportunities and Challenges in Tourism and Hospitality sectors. Journal of Tourism and Hospitality. 5(6).

Carvalho, I., Costa, C., Lykke, N. and Torres, A. (2019) Beyond the glass ceiling: Gendering tourism management. Annals of Tourism Research. 75, 79-91.

UNWTO and UN Women (2011) Global Report on Women in Tourism 2010. UNWTO: Madrid. Available from http://cf.cdn.unwto.org/sites/all/files/pdf/global_report_on_women_in_tourism_2010.pdf [accessed 9 May 2019].