Do green, low-carbon travel & tourism supply chains unintentionally exclude women?

May 26, 2026

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Do green, low-car­bon travel & tour­ism sup­ply chains unin­ten­tion­ally exclude women?

“[C]lean energy trans­itions are nev­er purely tech­nic­al. They redis­trib­ute costs and oppor­tun­it­ies, which can unin­ten­tion­ally widen exist­ing gender inequities.” 

This is what Kev­in Phun of the Centre for Respons­ible Tour­ism Singa­pore asks and argues in a “Good Tour­ism” Insight Bite that leads a com­pil­a­tion of responses.

How green, low-carbon supply chains unintentionally exclude women

Kevin Phun, Founder & Director, The Centre for Responsible Tourism Singapore

Decar­bon­isa­tion in travel & tour­ism involves meas­ur­ing emis­sions, green pro­cure­ment, and ret­ro­fit­ting. Yet, clean energy trans­itions are nev­er purely tech­nic­al. They redis­trib­ute costs and oppor­tun­it­ies, which can unin­ten­tion­ally widen exist­ing gender inequit­ies. 

Kevin Phun
Kev­in Phun

In devel­op­ing des­tin­a­tions, women are over-rep­res­en­ted in lower-paid roles and pre­cari­ous work. They will likely feel the down­side of decar­bon­isa­tion more acutely.

To reduce emis­sions, hotels and tour oper­at­ors increas­ingly prefer approved sup­pli­ers. While this improves account­ab­il­ity, it cre­ates gate­keep­ing; shut­ting out women-led micro-enter­prises that have to deal with often thin­ner mar­gins, weak­er access to fin­ance, and less time for paperwork.

When trace­ab­il­ity sys­tems and sus­tain­ab­il­ity doc­u­ment­a­tion become pre­requis­ites, the bur­den falls unevenly. A policy that looks ‘neut­ral’ on paper can exclude women-run cater­ing, small-scale pro­du­cers, and inform­al pro­viders from travel & tour­ism value chains. The more estab­lished and bet­ter-resourced firms win the contracts.

For example, female street vendors in Cairo are com­monly treated as illeg­al and seen as block­ing invest­ment and tour­ism devel­op­ment. Busi­ness prac­tices requir­ing per­mits dis­pro­por­tion­ately remove women’s inform­al, low-mar­gin income sources.

This exclu­sion is rein­forced by a cre­den­tial eco­nomy around sus­tain­ab­il­ity cer­ti­fic­a­tion. When a logo becomes a short­cut for trust, pro­cure­ment teams screen sup­pli­ers by cer­ti­fic­a­tion status rather than attain­able improve­ment. Women entre­pren­eurs can be locked out, even when their prac­tices are loc­ally appro­pri­ate and low-carbon.

Travel & tour­ism is dom­in­ated by often women-led small and medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs) that struggle to fin­ance upgrades and nav­ig­ate com­plex guid­ance. Because women entre­pren­eurs already face tight­er cred­it con­straints, trans­ition require­ments trans­late into high­er rel­at­ive costs. Decar­bon­isa­tion bur­eau­cracy and cre­den­tial­ism means women-led SMEs face high­er bar­ri­ers to entry than lar­ger or more estab­lished operators.

A just decar­bon­isa­tion path­way must pair car­bon goals with gender inclu­sion: sim­pli­fy­ing doc­u­ment­a­tion, provid­ing tar­geted fin­ance, and reward­ing improve­ment over credentials.

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It depends. Wrong question.

Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director, Meaningful Tourism Centre, Nepal

The first-level answer is, unsur­pris­ingly: it depends.

Prof Dr Wolfgang Georg Arlt FRGS FRAS, CEO, Meaningful Tourism Center, Germany
Read more by Prof Dr Wolfgang Georg Arlt

If you use a hol­ist­ic approach like ‘mean­ing­ful tour­ism’, which is based on the insight that travel & tour­ism is only sus­tain­able if it provides object­ive bene­fits and sub­ject­ive sat­is­fac­tion to all stake­hold­ers, it becomes clear that sup­ply chains that unin­ten­tion­ally or oth­er­wise exclude women are not ‘green’.

It also becomes clear that a ‘low-car­bon’ approach as a stan­dalone strategy is the wrong approach.

The world, includ­ing travel & tour­ism, is facing many chal­lenges on an unpre­ced­en­ted scale. These include cli­mate change, game-chan­ging tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ments, grow­ing geo­pol­it­ic­al ten­sions, and older, more mature trav­el­lers with chan­ging demands for trans­form­a­tion­al forms of consumption.

These chal­lenges are inter­con­nec­ted. Attempts to react to one of them while ignor­ing the oth­ers have failed, and will con­tin­ue to fail.

Elec­tric vehicles reduce pol­lu­tion, but do not stop cit­ies from being built around cars rather than people. Sim­il­arly, ‘low-car­bon’ tech­no­logy slows down cli­mate change a bit, but does not help with the inclu­sion of women or the fight against poverty.

So the deep­er-level answer to the ques­tion is: wrong question.

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Can travel & tourism ever be sustainable if inequality grows?

Pham Phi Anh, Deputy Head of Project Development — Fundraising Unit, Anh Duong Center, Vietnam

In the Mekong Delta, travel & tour­ism is often presen­ted as a solu­tion: more vis­it­ors, more jobs, more income, and more devel­op­ment. And some­times, that is true.

Phạm Phi Anh
Phạm Phi Anh

A fam­ily opens a homestay. A young per­son becomes a loc­al guide instead of migrat­ing to the city. A vil­lage keeps tra­di­tion­al food, music, or crafts alive because vis­it­ors value them. 

Travel & tour­ism can cre­ate pride and opportunity.

But I have also seen anoth­er reality.

In many places, travel & tour­ism money does not stay where the exper­i­ence hap­pens. River­side land becomes more valu­able, but loc­al fam­il­ies can­not afford to improve their homes. Out­side investors build com­fort­able eco-lodges while nearby com­munit­ies still struggle with flood­ing, unstable incomes, poor waste sys­tems, and cli­mate pressure.

The people smil­ing in travel & tour­ism bro­chures are often the same people car­ry­ing the heav­iest risks when vis­it­or num­bers drop. That is the con­tra­dic­tion. Travel & tour­ism can look envir­on­ment­ally ‘green’ while inequal­ity quietly grows under­neath it.

In the Mekong Delta, cli­mate change already pushes many rur­al fam­il­ies into fra­gile live­li­hoods. If travel & tour­ism devel­op­ment increases depend­ence without increas­ing loc­al own­er­ship or decision-mak­ing power, then sus­tain­ab­il­ity becomes very shal­low. A sol­ar pan­el on a resort roof does not auto­mat­ic­ally make the sur­round­ing sys­tem fair.

For me, travel & tour­ism becomes sus­tain­able only when com­munit­ies gain more than tem­por­ary income. They need a voice, bar­gain­ing power, land secur­ity, skills, and real par­ti­cip­a­tion in shap­ing travel & tour­ism itself. Oth­er­wise, sus­tain­ab­il­ity risks becom­ing a beau­ti­ful mar­ket­ing word float­ing above very unequal ground.

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Calling it ‘unintentional’ gives policymakers a free pass

Doreen Nyamweya, Tourism Officer, Nyamira County, Kenya

Wheth­er the exclu­sion of women from ‘green’ sup­ply chains is inten­tion­al or unin­ten­tion­al is a mat­ter of struc­tur­al design versus mali­cious intent.

Doreen Nyamweya
Doreen Nyam­weya

In many cases, I find it unin­ten­tion­al yet pro­foundly sys­tem­ic. It is not a case of someone say­ing women can­not par­ti­cip­ate, but a case of ignored barriers.

Women make up nearly 40% of the glob­al travel & tour­ism work­force, but they are often sub­jec­ted to struc­tur­al exclu­sion. This usu­ally hap­pens because policies are gender-blind. They are cre­ated uni­ver­sally, without account­ing for the dis­par­it­ies in the social and eco­nom­ic pos­i­tions of men and women. 

‘Green’ travel & tour­ism sup­ply chains often mar­gin­al­ise women by requir­ing form­al cer­ti­fic­a­tions that favour their asset-rich male counterparts. 

Fur­ther­more, an Inter­na­tion­al Mon­et­ary Fund (IMF) pub­lic­a­tion high­lights that the huge gender gap and under-rep­res­ent­a­tion of women in STEM (sci­ence, tech­no­logy, engin­eer­ing, and math­em­at­ics) edu­ca­tion excludes them from green jobs in renew­able energy and sus­tain­ab­il­ity man­age­ment that guar­an­tee faster growth. 

Com­pound­ing this with the bur­den of unpaid domest­ic labour, women lack the time to gain the neces­sary expert­ise, lead­ing to their exclu­sion from the emer­ging low-car­bon eco­nomy and its sup­ply chains. 

If we decar­bon­ise the industry but unin­ten­tion­ally leave women behind in the inform­al sec­tor, we haven’t cre­ated sus­tain­able travel & tour­ism devel­op­ment. Instead, we per­petu­ate the same inequal­ity we claim to have erad­ic­ated. By ignor­ing gender par­ity dur­ing the design phase, poli­cy­makers embed inequal­ity dir­ectly into ‘green’ infrastructure. 

There­fore, once we call it ‘unin­ten­tion­al’, we risk giv­ing poli­cy­makers a free pass. The minute we call it ‘sys­tem­ic’, we acknow­ledge that the sys­tem is work­ing exactly as it was designed: to favour those who already have the most resources to adapt.

When I look at how gender-blind policies affect already mar­gin­al­ised groups, I find that ‘unin­ten­tion­al’ over­sights are just as dam­aging as delib­er­ate, expli­cit exclusions.

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