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Call for papers
International conference
Gender issues: Implications for leisure and tourism
March 1st-3rd, 2012
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Conference focus and aims
Over
the last decades tourism has become one of the major international
economic activities, creating much needed employment and economic
development worldwide. The project report “Gender and tourism: Women’s
employment and participation in tourism” developed by UNED-UK in 1998,
demonstrated that, in what concerns gender employment, tourism is an
important sector for women. The percentage of women in tourism
employment is generally higher than in other sectors, particularly in
countries where tourism is a more mature industry. However, just like in
many other sectors, women are much more likely to be employed on a part
time basis (temporary and seasonal employment), and being paid less
than men are. The tourism sector has also a significant horizontal and
vertical gender segregation of the labour market. Horizontally, man and
woman are placed in different occupations; and vertically, lower levels
and occupations with few career development opportunities are dominated
by women. On the opposite, key managerial positions are dominated by
men, despite women around the world possessing higher levels of
education.
“Tourism
opens doors for women” was the theme for the United Nations’ World
Tourism Day in 2007, in order to increase public awareness of the great
opportunities that the tourism sector provides to women, and to
highlight some issues that still need to be revolved around, which are
relevant to Millennium Development Goals, such as ensuring income
parity, raising employment quality, creating reasonable workplace
conditions and penetrating glass ceilings. The UNWTO launched a new
action plan for the empowerment of women through tourism – as a part of
UN Millennium Development Goals on gender equality – which represents an
opportunity for innovative programs and strategies to foster women’s
empowerment and gender equality in tourism. Plans for new and innovative
research, policies and strategies in this area have started to develop.
The
conference organizers themselves are involved in a research project on
gender and tourism (GenTour). The project combines gender, education,
entrepreneurship and employment with ethic and economic issues. It aims
to examine the importance of women in the tourism sector, and analyze
and evaluate the reasons for and constraints to women’s vertical
mobility. Suggestions will be made for improving the role and situation
of women in tourism, in order to allow more balanced gender
participation in the economy. In this sense, it is believed that the
project can have strong managerial implications, thus contributing
gradually to the empowerment of women, so that they can play a greater
role in the global marketplace, also promoting national competitiveness
and higher levels of wellbeing for the society. Besides its managerial
implications, the project will provide substantial contributions to the
advancement of knowledge on gender studies, namely on women’s
participation in the tourism economy.
The
conference, a part of this project, represents its forward looking
component. It aims at creating space for critical thinking and debate,
while bringing together scholars, young researchers, practitioners and
policy makers, who have experience in research, teaching or practical
work in this field. Presentations on innovative perspectives and
critical discussion of the existing strategies, ideologies, current
practices and projects of empowerment of women are especially welcomed.
The aim is to build a critical glance at the endeavours and practices in
this field, gain and exchange knowledge about chances and challenges of
similar projects, and to think about their social, economic and
political impact. The conference purpose is to both disseminate the
findings of the GenTour project and raise awareness and critical
thinking on women’s vertical mobility, and to explore new research
possibilities, including cross-national research in similar domains.
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