Gender Equality and Tourism: Beyond Empowerment
Edited by Stroma Cole
How can tourism be a tool for the empowerment of women or their disenfranchisement? Stroma Cole brings together various articles in this collection that tackle the transformative capabilities of the hospitality industry on the lived experiences of women around the world. While the industry has the possibility to create reproductive change that could impact the empowerment of women for generations to come, the neo-liberal emphasis on production as the indicator of empowerment only empowers women to become better workers, not agents that can affect structural inequalities. Connected to this is the hyperfocus on closing the gender pay-gap which, while a necessary ill to remedy in our world, only results in women with higher pay but no greater influence to impact change. What does empowerment mean in different places and cultural contexts? How is empowerment conceptualized and how can we develop indicators to help guide industry practice? All these questions and more are answered in this valuable collection of resources that you can access here.