Females' perspectives on tourism's impact and their employment in the sector: The case of Petra,Jordan.

This study aims to explore the trend towards gender equality in the tourism sector of the Petra region, Jordan. To do so, a mixed methods design including a questionnaire and in-depth interviews was employed for female residents of rural and urban areas in the region. The results show that women do not have favourable view of tourism's economic impacts and that several barriers exist to their employment in the tourism sector. The findings' implications and future studies are addressed.     

Segregation of women in tourism employment in the APEC region

Women represent a majority of the tourism workforce globally, yet they remain under-represented in management roles and over-represented in part-time/casual work and low paid jobs. Prior research suggests women in employment, generally, and in tourism employment, specifically, experience gender discrimination, labour market and workplace segregation, work/family conflict, and other barriers to their employment and career progression. This paper presents results from an international survey of women's employment in the tourism sector, and analyses 363 responses representing the views of employers, employees, government officials, non-government organization representatives and academics across a range of tourism industries in 21 APEC member economies. The results reveal continued segregation of women across the economies, but also highlight national cultural barriers and intersectionality which affect women's employment and progression in tourism employment. Human resource management strategies, policy interventions, and implications to reduce gender segregation, increase representation in management, and provide equal employment opportunities are presented.     

Gender and economic performance: Evidence from the Spanish hotel industry

Recent research suggests that the stereotype of underperformance attributed to female management may not be the result so much of poorer management skills as to using unsuitable comparative performance measures, as well as not taking into account structural characteristics that may be detrimental to the financial performance of companies managed by women. Gender differences with regards to conditions and business goals can result in female underperformance when performance measures relate to firm size, such as total sales, assets, or profits. When appropriate measures of relative performance are used, women and men are likely to prove equally effective business managers. Using longitudinal panel data on a large sample of Spanish hotel firms, there are few differences found when growth and profitability are compared by gender within a bivariate framework. What's more, when a regression model designed to control other performance determining factors is estimated, the results show better management by women than by men. As such, the research provides evidence that stereotypes of women as poor performers must be abolished, and the glass ceiling preventing entry of women into management positions shattered.     

Leisure,gender and family: the influence of social policy

A number of authors have recently called for reconsideration of the way in which gender and the family are investigated within leisure studies. This paper proposes that future analyses should include more explicit recognition of the ideological and practical influence of social policy on contemporary gender relations. The paper suggests that social policy has particular significance for debates within leisure studies, about the relationship between men and women's market and domestic labour, and their access to leisure. The paper investigates the influence of social policy on male and female adult life patterns through comparative analysis of social policy interventions and labour market outcomes in the economically advanced nations. It focusses on the policy stance in relation to paid work, especially maternal and paternal employment. It is shown that ‘family-related’ social policies universally support fathers' employment, but vary in the extent to which they encourage mothers' labour market activity. The implications of this for gender differentiation in leisure are explored through analysis of cross-national data for male and female sports participation in Europe. The analysis shows a strong correlation between gender discrimination in family-related social policy, and differentials in male-female sports participation rates. The paper next considers the implications of policy intervention for divergence within the female population. A detailed case study of the UK examines how family-related policy may differentially affect women in different socio-economic situations. The paper concludes that whether family-related policies encourage women to see themselves primarily as caregivers within the family unit, or as citizens with individualized rights, is likely to affect both their sense of entitlement to personal leisure and their ability to access it.     

Casino management: Exploring gender-based differences in perceptions of managerial work

This study provides an exploratory analysis of gender differences in perceptions of male and female managers during strategy implementation within the Nevada casino industry. Specifically, the study explores whether male and female managers differ with respect to the relative emphasis placed on a variety of factors related to successful strategy implementation. Considering women's preference for transformational leadership and an interactive management approach based on personal power, it was expected that women would emphasize different factors than men.     

女性高管会提升旅游企业绩效吗?——来自旅游上市公司的经验研究

旅游业是女性就业较为集中的行业。近年来,我国旅游企业中女性高管不断增加,文章以2003-2016年期间我国旅游上市公司作为样本,基于高阶理论构建研究假设,并利用非平衡面板数据建立计量经济学模型,实证研究我国旅游上市公司中女性高管对企业绩效的影响。研究发现,旅游上市企业中女性高管对企业绩效具有显著促进作用;然而,对酒店行业的进一步分析表明,女性高管对酒店企业绩效的正向作用,会因为行业高度竞争压力的存在而受到抑制。研究结果丰富了现阶段女性研究相关文献,也为旅游企业管理决策提供了理论依据和经验支持。     

‘Thank the ladies for the plates’: The incorporation of women into sport

The extent to which women service the leisure of others can be well illustrated by an analysis of sport. It is argued that gender relations in sport are mediated by male interests and serve to incorporate women for the institution's maintenance and reproduction. Through the ideology of motherhood and wifehood, the domestic labour done by women provides space for others to participate in sport and contributes directly to their sporting effectiveness. This is particularly so concerning women's immediate family members. Some parallels are made to Finch's (1983) work on women's incorporation into men's jobs. Outside the home environment, women's contribution to sport is subscribed not only by their domestic roles, but also by the definition of women as sexual and the vicariousness through which women's lives are frequently lived. The argument presented here is predominantly illustrated by a discussion of gender relations in New Zealand and Australia.     

Breaking barriers for Bangladeshi female solo travelers

Asian Muslim women's travel habits are sorely under-researched. In response to various calls for research in this area, this study utilizes Hofstede's five cultural dimensions to determine how Bangladeshi cultural values inhibit and/or enhance travel constraints for solo Muslim female travelers and the subsequent effects on solo travel behavior. We propose solo travel as a strategic tourism development tool to achieve mobility rights and gender equality particularly for destinations that are highly populated with more women than men. Introducing an interpretivist qualitative approach, the study extracted both survey and open-ended responses from 307 frequent Bangladeshi solo travelers that were recruited from a women-only English-speaking Facebook Bangladeshi travel group. The findings reveal that this group is constrained by a unique combination of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural factors. Power-distance, masculinity, and uncertainty-avoidance also play key roles. Sustainable and practical applications are outlined for destination management organizations, travel planners, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and for-profit tour companies that benefit both Bangladeshi solo female travelers and those with whom they interact.     

Gender diversity in hospitality and tourism top management teams: A systematic review of the last 10 years

Due to women still accounting for less than a quarter of hospitality and tourism executive-level positions, the purpose of this paper was to identify antecedents to and outcomes of gender diverse hospitality and tourism top management teams, describe potential mediators and moderators to these relationships, and provide directions for future research. A systematic review of gender diversity in hospitality and tourism top management teams (TMTs) was conducted between the years 2010 and 2020, resulting in 26 articles used for the thematic analysis. Antecedents, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of gender diverse hospitality and tourism TMTs were identified. The results indicated female role models, organizational structure, and organizational support as antecedents, while financial performance, business growth, and human resource outcomes were consequences. The resource advantage theory is proposed as an explanation for each of these relationships. This study fills a gap in previous literature by conducting a review of gender diversity, identifying critical gaps, and proposing an overarching theory.     

“Women cannot lead”: empowering women through cultural tourism in Botswana

To rebalance the safari-tourism led tourism development policies in Botswana, the government has initiated a community-based cultural tourism policy, providing opportunities for women to become leaders and entrepreneurs. After reviewing the multifaceted, deeply contextualized and contested concept of women's empowerment, this paper examines perceptions of empowerment in Botswana and how far villagers felt that the new tourism policy has facilitated female agency and opportunity. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with female and male key informants in villages in southern Botswana. The new policy was found to have contributed significantly to a sense of female empowerment expressed in terms of freedom from economic dependency on men and society, and from depravity, emptiness and familial dependency. Women have progressed from passive involvement to active participation in culture-related tourism ventures. They also experienced vocational education but deferred formal educational opportunities to their offspring. Men were seen as facilitators and partners in women's involvement in tourism. However, barriers remain, including lack of startup capital, low levels of education, centralized control of protected tourism sites and low potential earnings. Ways are suggested to enhance the objectives and policies for women's participation in tourism in Botswana and other developing countries.     

Still pounding on the glass ceiling: A study of female leaders in hospitality,travel, and tourism management

Today, U.S. females represent the majority in both the hospitality and tourism management classroom and the work environment. However, the proverbial “glass ceiling” continues to exist, and evidence of career advancement obstacles remain salient in the hospitality, travel, and tourism management workplace. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of successful female industry leaders in the hospitality, travel, and tourism industry, as well as their perceptions as to how they were able to overcome gender barriers and disparities. Findings offer participant reported “top issues” facing female leaders in the workplace, as well as strategies for overcoming these issues.     

A triple whammy effect of employees' gender,job type,and service outcomes on consumer behavior

The extant literature reports inconsistent results regarding the effect of employee gender on customers' attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, the previous research on congruency bias has mainly focused on female-dominant jobs. To address these issues, this study examined how customers' gender stereotypes affect their service evaluations and revisit intentions. Grounded in role congruity theory, congruency bias, and justification-suppression models, the results showed that employee gender and gender congruency with the norm for the job have differential impacts on customer evaluations. Furthermore, this study found asymmetric impacts of congruency bias on customer experiences. For example, customers showed lower satisfaction and revisit intention when female employees failed in a male-dominant job than when their male counterparts did. However, they showed equal levels of satisfaction and revisit intention when male and female employees failed in a female-dominant job. The results provide important insights into how to reduce customers' gender bias toward different gender-dominated jobs.     

Gender and tourist experiences: assessing women's shared meanings for Beatrix Potter

As a social construct, tourism is premised upon inter-relationships between various producers and consumers. Within this system, gender differences may influence how tourist sites are interpreted and the symbolic associations visitors make with places. Adopting Johnson's (1986) circuits of culture framework and focusing primarily upon women visitors, this paper assesses meanings of Beatrix Potter inspired tourism in the English Lake District. Qualitative evidence highlights how women in particular conjoined an interest in Potter with the tourist visit to mediate other attitudes and values. Such links with non-tourist social practises were usually derived from associations with childhood and family life. The paper also considers how shopping and souvenir purchases helped to perpetuate and redefine this value system. Tourism occurs within a context of larger social-cultural structures and practices. In developing a more complete understanding of such aspects of tourism systems, gender constructs merit increased attention.     

Silk and steel: A gendered approach to career and life by upper echelon women executives in the hospitality and tourism industry in China

This qualitative study represents one of the early attempts to uncover the lived experience of thriving of top female leaders in the tourism and hospitality industry in China. Based on the narratives of 21 women executives in the hospitality and tourism industry in China, this study reveals that upper echelon (top management) females thrive by taking a gendered approach to life and career in a cultural environment with a strong Confucian tradition. This research systematically explored the unique gendered orientations and strategies these women executives used to achieve optimal functioning, as manifested in their thriving in both life and career. They acknowledge gender differences, embrace female qualities rather than deny them, and leverage these qualities to their advantage. The study findings offer significant theoretical and practical implications by illuminating a thriving perspective of the career advancement of women.     

The flag-bearers of change in a patriarchal Muslim society: Narratives of Iranian solo female travelers on Instagram

This paper examines the travel experiences of Iranian solo female travelers through an analysis of their Instagram posts. While there is a growing body of literature on solo female travelers, few studies involve women from Asian or Middle Eastern countries. In the case of the Iranian women who are the focus of this study, our analysis identified three main themes: meaning-making; power and empowerment; and facilitation of self-awareness and transformation. We argue that traveling solo is a form of active resistance against Iranian gender relations that creates opportunities for the women to overcome personal fears and logistical challenges. The act of writing up their experiences in their Instagram posts involves self-reflection and such critical analysis allows for greater levels of awareness of self that may then lead to self-transformation.     

Exploring intersections of physicality and female‐only canoeing experiences1

The benefits of single‐gender experiences for females have been discussed in a variety of contexts, including education, sport and outdoor recreation. In both the discourses of female‐run outdoor adventure travel programs providing such experiences, and the leisure studies and outdoor education literatures, claims are made about the distinct social environment created on such trips and the positive outcomes for females undertaking them. Absent from these discourses is reference to empirical research exploring women's perceptions of such experiences, thereby allowing one to evaluate the merit of such claims. In what would initially appear to be an observation in a completely different vein, there is also a relative dearth of scholarly examinations within leisure and recreational studies of women's lived‐body experiences of their physicalities through active outdoor recreation, and the potentially empowering effects of them. This paper seeks to draw out the connections between these seemingly disparate observations through a qualitative examination of women's experiences of female‐only wilderness canoeing. While the reasons articulated by the women for undertaking such an experience did not explicitly identify issues related to their physicalities, clearly these issues resonated with and held implications for their experiences of them. This, in turn, provides substantiation for claims regarding the importance of the provision of all‐female outdoor experiences.     

Gender Matters in Hospitality (invited paper for ‘luminaries’ special issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management)

This article is a review paper, which examines the place of gender in hospitality research and education and discusses the significance of hospitality for women's employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. The paper’s main purpose, however, is to speculate on the future of hospitality gender research and women’s employment prospects in the industry. It suggests that, despite the emergence of gender perspectives in hospitality research and the recent rise of popular feminism in response to high-profile sexual harassment cases and a well-publicised gender pay gap, gender still does not occupy mainstream territory in the field. The paper stresses the continued missed opportunities of neglecting female talent and calls on female and male leaders to shape a gender-just future in hospitality study and practice by mentoring and holding hierarchies to account. The paper identifies AI and robotics and sexual exploitation and harassment as two areas in which hospitality gender scholars could lead scholarship and policy debates on gendered human experiences.     

Gender discrimination in haute cuisine: A systematic literature and media analysis

Haute cuisine has become an essential activity within the hospitality industry, and gastronomy plays a vital role in tourism economics, receiving significant attention from the media each day. Thus, women’s access to the culinary profession and their barriers to progress in the field to chef status have been profusely studied within the academic literature and covered by global media. This article will analyze and compare how academia and media have dealt with the issue of gender discrimination in haute cuisine, whether their conclusions are similar, and what they outline; it is a relevant contribution with an original literature analysis on gender and haute cuisine.     

The female tourist experience in Egypt as an Islamic destination

In Islamic destinations female tourists face the added challenge of negotiating their way through male constructed local norms. This paper fills the gap in gender and tourism research with a focus on female tourists’ experiences in Egypt as an Islamic destination, outlining the diverse ways in which gender shapes and influences their experiences. A qualitative approach was taken to explore women’s coping strategies with the male sexualised gaze that they encountered during their holiday in Egypt, and sheds light on measures taken towards safeguarding themselves. Their experiences were highly influenced and often involuntarily altered by unwanted male attention and sexual harassment, as the women felt the need to fit into local female norms of behaviour in order to safeguard themselves.     

Andries Sternheim and the study of leisure in the early critical theory

The issue of pornography as a form of leisure practice has received little attention from researchers. In this study, the impact of pornography consumption on women's lives was examined. A diverse group of thirty-two women was interviewed, with discussion focusing on their individual experiences, meanings, and perceptions of pornography. The women's reactions to pornography, especially to violent pornography, were consistently negative. Pornography elicited fear reactions, had a negative effect on women's identities and on their relationships with men, and was seen to reinforce sexist attitudes among men. Despite this, many of the women felt that their opinions were not ‘legitimate’, and overt resistance to pornography was often muted. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of pornography in the reproduction of gender, the ideology of individualism, and the potential for resistance among women.