Assessing the UNWTO’s Report on Women: tourism’s impacts on gender equality

de Jong, A. and Figueroa-Domecq, C. (2022) Assessing the UNWTO’s Report on Women: tourism’s impacts on gender equality. In: Stoffelen, A. and Ioannides, D. (eds.) Handbook of Tourism Impacts and Impact Assessment. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, pp. 151-165. ISBN 9781800377677 (doi: 10.4337/9781800377684.00021)

Abstract

The UNWTO suggests that tourism offers opportunities for women as entrepreneurs and employees and goes so far as to claim that tourism can advance the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality. The UNWTO makes such claims despite the gendered inequalities that prevail within tourism, whereby women's employment has been characterised as informal, flexible and low quality. Recognising inconsistencies in the positioning of tourism as a way to achieve gender equality, alongside the location of the UNWTO as one of the most influential organizations informing tourism sustainability, this chapter aims to assess the ways 'gender equality' and 'empowerment' are framed by this organization, through analysis of the UNWTO's 2019 Global Report on Women in Tourism. We argue that the UNWTO needs to attend to tourism's prevailing gendered inequalities if the industry is to serve as a medium through which to generate social impacts in regard to gender equality and empowerment.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: de Jong, Dr Anna
• Authors: de Jong, A., and Figueroa-Domecq, C.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social & Environmental Sustainability
• Publisher: Edward Elgar
• ISBN: 9781800377677
• Published Online: 13 May 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 Arie Stoffelen and Dimitri Ioannides
• First Published: First published in Handbook of Tourism Impacts and Impact Assessment: 151-165
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy