Can tourism contribute to gender equality? Evidence from South American countries

Abstract

The research examines the causal relationship between tourism and gender equality for 10 South American countries in the period 2006-2019. Panel data modelling has been used to account for unobservable heterogeneity derived from time series and cross-sectional data. Estimates of the gender equality index have been made for both fixed and random effects for four models, considering as explanatory variables international tourism receipts (% of exports) which were kept constant in each of the estimates, in addition to real GDP per capita (model 2), education expenditures (model 3) and female labor participation in agriculture, industry and services (model 4). Based on the estimates we selected, through the Hausman test, those with fixed effects in three of the four models, which were corrected for the presence of autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity problems. The results show that tourism has a positive and significant effect on gender equality. With respect to the control variables, education expenditure and GDP per capita are found to be statistically significant, showing a direct relationship with gender equality, similarly to international tourism receipts. An inverse relationship is identified between gender equality and women's labor participation in agriculture and services.