For More Equality of Women in Tourism

The twin publications for the public and private sectors respectively, provide specific tools to support tourism institutions and businesses to integrate gender considerations into their policies, programming and strategies and boost the opportunities tourism offers for women's empowerment.

Women have a vital part to play in achieving the objects of the 2030 docket for Sustainable Development, in particular the commitments to gender quality and the empowerment of women in the Sustainable Development Goal 5.

UNWTO is committed to enhancing the positive impact of tourism development on women’s lives, and, in so doing, contributing to the achievement of the Fifth Sustainable Development Goal –" achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls".

Since 2007, it has been working – through its Ethics, Culture and Social Responsibility Department - in cooperation with UN Women and a range of external mates across the globe, to bring gender issues to the forefront of the tourism sector, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and encouraging member countries to mainstream gender issues in their separate tourism programmes.

As per data most regions of the world have a majority workforce in the tourism sector but they tend to be the lowest paid and the lowest in status. Moreover, in family tourism businesses they do a large amount of work without pay.

The ruinous effects of the COVID- 19 pandemic presented the tourism sector with a golden occasion to review its gender balance.

With the Support of several organisations, UNWTO will implement the Centre Stage project for ‘Women’s empowerment during the COVID19 recovery’, with the aim to strengthen, coordinate and focus work towards gender equality in tourism governmental institutions and businesses as they recover from the pandemic. The Centre Stage project bases its activities in the findings of the Global Report on Women in Tourism Second edition, which focuses action into six strategic areas (i) Employment; (ii) Entrepreneurship; (iii) Education and Training; (iv) Leadership, policy and decision-making; (v) Community and civil society and (vi) Measurement for better policies. The project is being piloted in four member states from 2021 - 2022: Jordan, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Mexico. UNWTO has published a new set of guidelines addressing the needs of women in the tourism sector. The twin publications for the public and private sectors respectively, provide specific tools to support tourism institutions and businesses to integrate gender considerations into their policies, programming and strategies and boost the opportunities tourism offers for women's empowerment. They have been developed with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and UN Women, with the additional purpose of ensuring an inclusive and resilient recovery from the impacts of the pandemic, given the disproportionate effect suffered by women working in tourism. The main segments deal with gender mainstreaming guidelines for the public sector and gender-inclusive strategy for tourism businesses.

There are specific tools to support tourism institutions and businesses to integrate gender considerations into their programmes, programming and strategies and boost the openings tourism offers for women's empowerment.

The Global Report on Women in Tourism 2010 was officially launched at ITB Berlin in March 2011. As the first attempt to map women’s active participation in the tourism industry worldwide, the Global Report represents a landmark in the field of tourism and gender, focusing on five main areas: employment, entrepreneurship, leadership, community and education. In the context of responsible tourism and local development, this study confirms that tourism can act as a vehicle for the empowerment of women whilst highlighting the remaining challenges for gender equality in tourism.

While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment under the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world.

First, national governments and international organisations are committed to gender equality through a series of commitments: the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goals 5. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are fundamental components of just, equitable societies. Tourism has been proven to provide pathways to empowerment, and that the opportunity for tourism to make a difference in this area should be maximised.

Second, due to women’s concentration in lower status and lower paid jobs in tourism, their potential to contribute fully is currently untapped. Empowering women to participate fully in economic life is essential to building strong economies; creating more stable and just societies; achieving internationally agreed goals for development, sustainability and human rights; and improving the quality of life of women, and consequently, that of communities.

For the tourism sector, the impact of greater gender equality and women’s empowerment would be highly beneficial, because diverse and gender equitable organisations perform better.