Abstract
Tourism is considered as an essential source of generating employment, reducing poverty, and empowering women. Most of the tourism initiatives targeting poverty reduction primarily focus on providing income opportunities for women that only enhance their economic empowerment. Nevertheless, this does not usually lead to make overall development. This is attributed to the normative gender roles, cultural complexities, and power inequities that exist in societies. Additionally, most of the earlier research studies on tourism, poverty reduction, and women empowerment are also based on economic factors. Contrarily, limited studies are focused on non-economic factors. These non-economic factors are social, political, and psychological components that are essentially important for women's overall empowerment. Thus, these factors need to be studied comprehensively as they may hinder women’s participation in tourism activities. Having taken this background as the underlying problem of study, this paper is an attempt to highlight the social and political barriers impeding women empowerment and investigate about tourism development in the socio-political contexts affecting women, especially in rural areas, using case studies pertaining to different tourism destinations.
Highlights
The tourism industry has emerged as one of the fastest expanding industries globally, creating employment opportunities in formal and informal sectors (Ferguson, 2011; Wilkinson & Pratiwi, 1995) for both men and women
It is evidenced from the facts that women in rural areas of developing countries are shifting from agriculture to tourism due to less physical labor (Spenceley & Meyer, 2012)
A case study approach is being used concerning the debated issue linked with the socio-political changes in relation to women empowerment through tourism development
Summary
The tourism industry has emerged as one of the fastest expanding industries globally, creating employment opportunities in formal and informal sectors (Ferguson, 2011; Wilkinson & Pratiwi, 1995) for both men and women. It provided ample jobs prospects for skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled women to enter into the industry in 21st century as compared to the 20th century. Tourism has brought various job options for women to enter into the public domain thereby becoming independent and self-reliant. Women have been primarily considered responsible for reproduction (Sahay, 1998) and are expected to stay indoors and perform their household duties without stepping out from the four walls of house to work independently
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