Apply now: Unprecedented ‘gender equality’ award to be bestowed at ITB 2023

Equal­ity in Tour­ism is launch­ing its Award for Com­mit­ment to Gender Equal­ity. 

Dr Stroma Cole and Dr Yas­min Begum dis­cuss the ori­gins and object­ives of the Award in this “GT” ‘sponsored post’, which was offered free-of-charge by “GT’s” pub­lish­er.

This inter­na­tion­al award will be the first of its kind and seeks to recog­nise tour­ism organ­isa­tions that dis­play excel­lence in their com­mit­ment to gender equality. 

Equal­ity in Tour­ism first put for­ward the idea of an award when the organ­isa­tion won the ToDo Award for Human Rights in Tour­ism at ITB Ber­lin in 2021. 

With the sup­port of ITB, the new award seeks to address gender inequal­it­ies in tour­ism by reward­ing lead­ers in the field, cel­eb­rat­ing their excel­lence by identi­fy­ing best prac­tice and driv­ing improvement. 

» Apply NOW (deadline January 17, 2023) «

The gen­es­is of the award is the 2018 pub­lic­a­tion Gender Equal­ity and Tour­ism: Bey­ond Empower­ment. The work looked at women’s involve­ment in tour­ism and high­lighted com­mon themes in their exper­i­ences before look­ing at the pos­sib­il­it­ies for change. 

The Award itself is thus a form of an action plan because what those stor­ies illus­trated was that tour­ism can improve gender equal­ity but also that empower­ment comes from a col­lect­ive respons­ib­il­ity and a shared vision. 

Key to this shared vis­ion is hav­ing pride in your work and busi­ness. By tak­ing part in the applic­a­tion pro­cess, a busi­ness dis­plays not only their best prac­tices but also solid­ar­ity for the cause of gender equality.

Through the work of Equal­ity in Tour­ism, we have seen that empower­ment comes from the sat­is­fac­tion of break­ing gender ste­reo­types and there are vari­ous ways that psy­cho­lo­gic­al empower­ment can be expressed, includ­ing through a sense of self-worth. 

At the same time, recog­ni­tion and acknow­ledge­ment is also needed in a pub­lic sphere and so the Award for Com­mit­ment to Gender Equal­ity is a way to har­ness that sense of pub­lic recognition. 

The Award there­fore rep­res­ents the social cap­it­al earned by busi­nesses and is one step fur­ther on the path to trans­form­ing gender roles. 

Our ambi­tion is to cre­ate a crit­ic­al con­scious­ness of inequal­ity and injustice which will gen­er­ate the wider impetus for soci­et­al change.

We know that tour­ism can bring hope, but it can also bring fear as the under­ly­ing struc­tur­al inequal­it­ies mean that women are con­stantly vulnerable. 

Read oth­er “GT” con­tent tagged with “Women”

The United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion has sug­ges­ted that tour­ism can empower women in mul­tiple ways by the pro­vi­sion of jobs, but we have to ask ourselves: what kind of jobs and in what conditions? 

Many tour­ism jobs are in hospitality. 

In Fair Work For All?, a recent report from the Uni­ver­sity of Strath­clyde which examined the Scot­tish hos­pit­al­ity industry, the authors noted that around “95% of respond­ents repor­ted either exper­i­en­cing or wit­ness­ing, verbal/psychological abuse, phys­ic­al abuse, racial/ethnic abuse, sexu­al abuse/harassment, and bul­ly­ing in the workplace”. 

Alarm­ingly, the report high­lighted the per­cep­tion that busi­ness own­ers were not tak­ing these issues ser­i­ously, with one respond­ent sug­gest­ing that there is “barely any sup­port in this industry”. 

How­ever, if appro­pri­ately addressed, hos­pit­al­ity can provide stable employ­ment with a fair wage, great­er job secur­ity, and rights which lead to less stress and few­er injuries. 

By improv­ing the situ­ation of female tour­ism work­ers and invest­ing wisely, the whole industry can pro­mote social justice and fur­ther the goal of sustainability. 

By mak­ing an applic­a­tion for the Award, applic­ants are show­cas­ing how they care about the human rights of their employees. 

They are say­ing that there is a col­lect­ive respons­ib­il­ity to invest in Gender Equal­ity and that your busi­ness is at the fore­front of change.

The Award for Com­mit­ment to Gender Equal­ity will be presen­ted at ITB Ber­lin 2023 on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, March 8, 2023. 

» Apply NOW (deadline January 17, 2023) «

Fea­tured image (top of post): Sup­plied by Equal­ity in Tourism.