Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Gender equality and women’s empowerment through sustainable tourism
The 2030 Agenda is a tool that rethinks sustainable development at social, economic and environmental levels. This Agenda gave shape to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in which gender equality and empowerment of women is a main issue for the next 15 years. If there is no gender equality and empowerment of women, there cannot be sustainable development. The 2030 Agenda emphasizes that “The achievement of full human potential and of sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full human rights and opportunities” and also states that the mainstreaming of a gender perspective should be systematic and continuous. In other words, a gender analysis should not solely be limited to Goal 5, as this would only weaken gender mainstreaming in the rest of the SDGs. Thus, Goal 5 supports the mainstreaming of gender equality in each of the Agenda’s objectives and goals. To achieve genuinely sustainable/responsible tourism, all budgets, statements and expertise must be aware that gender equality and women´s empowerment is a core issue. It is not an extra. On the contrary, it is integral to the initiation, the planning, the execution and the monitoring and assessment of every activity, project or programme about tourism or related to it.

Political willingness and a reappraisal of economic, social and environmental development priorities are indispensable so that the cross-cutting gender perspective is correctly channelled. The best indicator of progress is the increased orientation and investment to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment at national, regional and global levels. These are facts, not only words.

In this sense, the 2030 Agenda produces a transformation in the development perspective, making it more humane since the SDGs in part were created because it was recognized that fostering social development is not the same as sustainable human development. This plan of action constitutes an opportunity to position gender equality and women’s empowerment as an essential component in the creation and implementation of public policy. It is a chance to enhance gender equality and women’s empowerment in sectors where it does not exist or is in a very initial phase, as in tourism. It may also help to end the out-dated strategy of “add women and mix” and to replace it with analysis of women and gender-based power relations when designing, proposing, creating and implementing any sort of measure – in other words: to really implement gender mainstreaming.

Some data about women in tourism
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the participation of women in the hotel and restaurant service industry is approximately 55.5 percent globally, and reaches 70 percent in some regions. This percentage is 55.9 percent in Spain; 58.4 percent in Costa Rica; 58.5 percent in Mexico; 65 percent in Thailand; 76.3 percent in Peru; and 85.6 percent in Lithuania. To some extent, tourism is shaped by female work.

The Global Report on Women in Tourism 2010, jointly commissioned by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and UN Women, provided a global vision of women’s situation in this sector. The report concluded that “women are often concentrated in low status, low paid and precarious jobs in the tourism industry”. Women are understood from a quantitative rather than a qualitative point of view.

To pigeonhole the work of gender and tourism solely in the tourism-related SDGs emphasised by UNWTO (n.d.) (>> Goal 8.9, >>Goal 12, 12b, >> Goal14,14.7) would led to a reduction of efforts aimed at consolidating the sustainable development of tourism. It is well-known that tourism has an impact beyond job creation, particularly in terms of environmental, social and political effects generated. Furthermore, employment analysis gives rise to a chain of multiple variables related to the economy, poverty, politics and social health.

The major challenge is to increase the development of tourism from a gender perspective. It is often believed that gender analysis involves counting men and women without considering the differences between them. Working in tourism from a gender perspective entails the use of a gender analysis – critical to improving the sustainable development of tourism in itself.

This type of analysis reveals, with the most detail possible, the differences and inequalities between women and men, their causes and consequences and the manner in which they are or are not visible. It provides a basis to foster compensation measures that diminish or eliminate gender gaps.

The development of tourism with a gender perspective implies analysing how women and men contribute, experience and are individually and collectively affected by the development of tourism, with three essential objectives:

• Identify the causes of discrimination that occur directly and indirectly due to the development of tourism.
• Improve tourism planning and management processes through planning concepts and tools that promote a gender perspective. In order to do this, it is necessary to align the global gender and development agenda with the analysis and proposals promoted by the tourism sector.
• Reassess the concept of sustainability of tourism development by incorporating a women-focused analysis.

Some significant points should be considered in the SDG and tourism context with a gender perspective.

Implementation and monitoring of the sustainability of tourism
Tourism at a local level needs to be designed in consideration of the power relations generated by access to and control of resources, and of the negative impacts on the capacity development of women, girls and boys. It is important to make an analysis of the gender dimensions of women’s participation in different sectors linked to tourism such as agriculture, coffee, services and construction as well as a gender analysis of the private sector related to tourism, mainly multinational corporations.

Policies
Governments need to implement tourism strategies with a cross-cutting gender perspective or design tourism strategies from a gender perspective that become de facto part of the country’s tourism strategy and are prioritized in its budget and resources. The first step is to understand the realities of the women that live in the tourism destinations and of those who are involved in tourism as workers. Participatory tourism planning and management from a gender perspective is one of the essential principles in all policy planning and management. This must of course incorporate corporate social and environmental responsibility, training and education. At this point, it is necessary to foster women’s participation in areas where they are currently not present, but that are essential for the creation and implementation of tourism policies (>> Goal 16 Governance).

Businesses and consumption
Gender analysis needs to be integrated into the value chain to consolidate fair trade and ensure women’s participation and, especially, decision-making. Responsible consumption (>> Goal 12) needs to be encouraged not only in the demand for standards for visitors, but also to increase the security for women and girls living in tourism destinations and for women who travel by their own.

Decent work (>> Goal 8) requires a gender perspective in tourism employment policies, placing emphasis on salary gaps, sexual abuse and harassment by colleagues and tourists, and fostering female workers’ participation and decision-making.

The development of tourism with a gender perspective is essential to attain excellence in the sustainability and responsibility of tourism. Furthermore, since the launch of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda effectively coincides with the UN declaration of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, the tourism sector will be able to demonstrate its political willingness to ensure gender equality and women’s empowerment.

• Ferguson, L., & Moreno, D. (2015). Gender and sustainable tourism: Reflections on theory and practice. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23(3), 401-416.
• UNWTO (n.d.) Tourism and the SDGs http://icr.unwto.org/content/tourism-and-sdgs