'Women Cannot Lead': Empowering Women Through Cultural Tourism in Botswana

Abstract

Botswana, like many African nations, has a patriarchal history in which women have not been socially or economically empowered. In an attempt to accrue benefits to disadvantaged groups such as women, the nation has recently embarked on a new tourism policy that shifts the emphasis away from five-star safaris toward village-based cultural tourism. Utilizing empowerment and freedom frameworks of poverty alleviation, this paper examines the extent and ways in which people living and working in three villages in southern Botswana feel that the new tourism policy has facilitated female empowerment. In total, approximately fifteen semi-structured interviews will be conducted with women and men living and working in villages of southern Botswana. The bulk of these (approximately 75%) will be conducted with women. The remainder will incorporate men who are in a position to have an impact on women’s empowerment. To date, the study has covered three communities with eleven women and three men from six ethnicities to determine their perceived level of empowerment resulting from cultural tourism developments in their villages. Preliminary findings have identified several ways in which the new policies might be contributing to female empowerment and poverty alleviation as well as some barriers to fulfillment of equality and opportunity. Also, the study uncovers the meaning of empowerment as revealed by women in Botswana. The study will therefore point to ways in which the goals of the policy might best be achieved.