Challenging Gender, Empowerment, and Entrepreneurship in Tourism: The Role of Vietnam’s first women-owned tour company in Ha Giang.
Author: Mia Doris
2 Commentries
Abstract: This discussion paper explores how the Ha Giang Sisters are navigating and challenging gender norms of participation within tourism entrepreneurship in rural economies as the first and only women-led adventure tour company in the Ha Giang Loop, Vietnam. Using intersectionality and critiques of post-colonial feminist positions, it evaluates the true nature of empowerment and mobility for women in entrepreneurship in an unevenly structured system.
Key Words: Vietnam, women empowerment, tourism entrepreneurship, feminist tourism, adventure tourism, sustainable development.
Cultural and gendered structures have become foundational attributes that keep women from enabling power and mobility, often placed into passive positions. More specifically, tourism entrepreneurship is promoted as a low entry industry, yet there is a large divide of opportunities between men and women, especially in global South nations like Vietnam, which face cultural and socio-economic barriers that perpetuate hierarchies. Adventure tourism enables these constraints further as the rural and precarious nature of the roles extends gender divisions, with female guides found to experience increased levels of harassment, income instability, and societal expectations in patriarchal regions (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2025). The masculinised nature of adventure tourism, alongside the systemic gendered inequalities, can further deter women from entering the sector through entrepreneurship, hence the importance of this paper that explores the women who have challenged this.
Vietnam exemplifies these inequalities, as it has a large population of rural and ethnic minority groups and has a strong Confucian society where men carry more power. In particular, Ha Giang is a mountainous and rural region that creates an intersectional environment through high poverty rates, decreased access to education, and feminised expectations. Nonetheless, social media has created rapid tourist expansion of the Ha Giang Loop motorbike route, and has begun to see the consequences of overconsumption and masculinised tourist products, through crowding, inauthenticity, and thrilling motorbike adventures. In contrast, the Ha Giang Sisters have emerged as a new approach to the current unsustainable tourism model, through a focus on community and culture. They are the first women-led and women-owned motorbike tour company in the region and are a seminal case in breaking barriers of intersectionality.
The Ha Giang Sisters not only act as a disrupter to the traditional male dominated roles within adventure tour guiding, but also represent women-led entrepreneurship in an empowering way by moving beyond conventional tourism entrepreneurship for women that has historically been linked to ‘feminised roles’, such as homestays, that can reinforce their gendered positions. This has caused debates over what true empowerment is, as entrepreneurship does not automatically create freedom, particularly in the global South (Ojediran & Anderson, 2020). In this sense, the Sisters become a symbol for women in the industry who face constraints, alongside female travellers who may feel underrepresented in masculine environments. Additionally, in global South environments when the tourist gaze becomes standard and women are relegated to subordination, the Sisters are able to switch the narrative where community and women are at the center of power and authority over tourists, entering the host gaze. Thus, emphasising how women-led entrepreneurship can foster and align with sustainability goals.
However, there may be limits to their empowerment within wider sociological discourses. For instance, the Sisters can be said to be within the circle of social entrepreneurship, when the business’s aim is to support a social issue, which can sustain the feminised perception that women are less driven to success than men due to the focus on non-monetary goals. Secondly, the Sisters can be argued to be commodifying their gender as a way to gain a competitive edge in the market and strategically leverage their femininity through passive branding like ‘culture’ and ‘trust’, contrasting traditional Loop branding featuring ‘thrill’ or ‘adventure’. At the same time, the problematisation of the Sisters can be faulty within itself as it assumes that masculine and western values of achievement are the default and that male intervention is needed in order to achieve success, which highlights the risk that feminised and non-western models become undervalued (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2020). There is also no correct way for women to enter the market, as the conditions may need them to utilise their gender and take control of their womanhood on their own terms. Particularly for the Ha Giang Loop, a tourism product that is feminised and community based can help advance the region in a sustainable way, avoiding inauthenticity and commodification.
Overall, this discussion paper emphasises that using entrepreneurship is not a direct freedom from masculine, western power structures, and that inequalities have to be continuously negotiated and challenged. The case of the Ha Giang Sisters draws attention to the limits and opportunities of empowerment, requiring a more holistic transformation towards access and regulations that produce equal environments.
References:
Figueroa-Domecq, C., de Jong, A., and Williams, A. M. (2020) Gender, tourism & entrepreneurship: A critical review. Annals of Tourism Research, 84 102980.
Ojediran, F., & Anderson, A. (2020). Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Global South: Empowering and Emancipating? Administrative Sciences, 10(4) 87.
Nguyen, H.T.V., and Nguyen, V.T.P. (2025) The gendered landscape of tourism: social stereotypes and job difficulties for female tour guides. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 8(7) 2633–2648.
Key Words: Vietnam, women empowerment, tourism entrepreneurship, feminist tourism, adventure tourism, sustainable development.
Cultural and gendered structures have become foundational attributes that keep women from enabling power and mobility, often placed into passive positions. More specifically, tourism entrepreneurship is promoted as a low entry industry, yet there is a large divide of opportunities between men and women, especially in global South nations like Vietnam, which face cultural and socio-economic barriers that perpetuate hierarchies. Adventure tourism enables these constraints further as the rural and precarious nature of the roles extends gender divisions, with female guides found to experience increased levels of harassment, income instability, and societal expectations in patriarchal regions (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2025). The masculinised nature of adventure tourism, alongside the systemic gendered inequalities, can further deter women from entering the sector through entrepreneurship, hence the importance of this paper that explores the women who have challenged this.
Vietnam exemplifies these inequalities, as it has a large population of rural and ethnic minority groups and has a strong Confucian society where men carry more power. In particular, Ha Giang is a mountainous and rural region that creates an intersectional environment through high poverty rates, decreased access to education, and feminised expectations. Nonetheless, social media has created rapid tourist expansion of the Ha Giang Loop motorbike route, and has begun to see the consequences of overconsumption and masculinised tourist products, through crowding, inauthenticity, and thrilling motorbike adventures. In contrast, the Ha Giang Sisters have emerged as a new approach to the current unsustainable tourism model, through a focus on community and culture. They are the first women-led and women-owned motorbike tour company in the region and are a seminal case in breaking barriers of intersectionality.
The Ha Giang Sisters not only act as a disrupter to the traditional male dominated roles within adventure tour guiding, but also represent women-led entrepreneurship in an empowering way by moving beyond conventional tourism entrepreneurship for women that has historically been linked to ‘feminised roles’, such as homestays, that can reinforce their gendered positions. This has caused debates over what true empowerment is, as entrepreneurship does not automatically create freedom, particularly in the global South (Ojediran & Anderson, 2020). In this sense, the Sisters become a symbol for women in the industry who face constraints, alongside female travellers who may feel underrepresented in masculine environments. Additionally, in global South environments when the tourist gaze becomes standard and women are relegated to subordination, the Sisters are able to switch the narrative where community and women are at the center of power and authority over tourists, entering the host gaze. Thus, emphasising how women-led entrepreneurship can foster and align with sustainability goals.
However, there may be limits to their empowerment within wider sociological discourses. For instance, the Sisters can be said to be within the circle of social entrepreneurship, when the business’s aim is to support a social issue, which can sustain the feminised perception that women are less driven to success than men due to the focus on non-monetary goals. Secondly, the Sisters can be argued to be commodifying their gender as a way to gain a competitive edge in the market and strategically leverage their femininity through passive branding like ‘culture’ and ‘trust’, contrasting traditional Loop branding featuring ‘thrill’ or ‘adventure’. At the same time, the problematisation of the Sisters can be faulty within itself as it assumes that masculine and western values of achievement are the default and that male intervention is needed in order to achieve success, which highlights the risk that feminised and non-western models become undervalued (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2020). There is also no correct way for women to enter the market, as the conditions may need them to utilise their gender and take control of their womanhood on their own terms. Particularly for the Ha Giang Loop, a tourism product that is feminised and community based can help advance the region in a sustainable way, avoiding inauthenticity and commodification.
Overall, this discussion paper emphasises that using entrepreneurship is not a direct freedom from masculine, western power structures, and that inequalities have to be continuously negotiated and challenged. The case of the Ha Giang Sisters draws attention to the limits and opportunities of empowerment, requiring a more holistic transformation towards access and regulations that produce equal environments.
References:
Figueroa-Domecq, C., de Jong, A., and Williams, A. M. (2020) Gender, tourism & entrepreneurship: A critical review. Annals of Tourism Research, 84 102980.
Ojediran, F., & Anderson, A. (2020). Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Global South: Empowering and Emancipating? Administrative Sciences, 10(4) 87.
Nguyen, H.T.V., and Nguyen, V.T.P. (2025) The gendered landscape of tourism: social stereotypes and job difficulties for female tour guides. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 8(7) 2633–2648.