Gender issues in tourism organisations: insights from a two-phased pragmatic systematic literature review

Abstract

Previous research has underlined gendered labour issues and provided recommendations for organisations to advance gender equality within the tourism and hospitality sector. Yet, little is known about how academic research has been translated into actual practice by tourism organisations. The study provides a pragmatic systematic review to compare tourism academic and grey literature from NGOs and large public tourism companies, with an aim of identifying gaps between academia and industry, and between rhetoric and practice. The analyses of 102 academic and 122 grey literature revealed that both types of literature lack focus on the cultural and individual dimensions of gendering process while explicitly focus on the organising system and developed economies. The review highlights insufficient details of company report and calls for developing concrete regulation or standard to measure and report gender equality practice in tourism. This review contributes to knowledge by charting the development of academic research in real-life situations to achieve equitable and sustainable workplace for both women and men in tourism.

Keywords:

• Gender equality
• tourism management
• systematic review
• pragmatism
• women employment
• company reports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jess Sanggyeong Je

Jess Sanggyeong Je is a PhD candidate in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith University, Australia. She is interested in gender issues, intersectionality framework and human resource management. She co-published the gender and race representation in tourism knowledge through empirical evidence in Journal of Sustainable Tourism. For her PhD thesis, she is examining the effectiveness of diversity and equality initiatives in tourism organisations under the supervision of Catheryn Khoo and Elaine Chiao Ling Yang.

Catheryn Khoo

Catheryn Khoo is an Associate Professor at Griffith University, Australia, and consultant to the UNWTO on the 2019 Global Report on Women in Tourism. Her research interest is on tourist and guest behaviour, with a passionate focus on women, families and young children and on understanding these segments from an Asian perspective. She has co-published six books. She is Editor-in-Chief of Tourism Management Perspectives and serves on the editorial boards of several other tourism and hospitality journals. She is also the founder and chair of Women Academics in Tourism (WAiT).

Elaine Chiao Ling Yang

Elaine Chiao Ling Yang is a Lecturer in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith University, Australia. Her research interests are empowering women in tourism, gender-based violence, Asian tourism and social impact of tourism. Some of the projects that she is currently working on include providing digital competency training to women entrepreneurs in developing countries and investigating gender-based violence in tourism. Her works have been published in Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. She is an editorial board member of Tourism Management Perspectives and Annals of Leisure Research. She has been identified as an Emerging Tourism Scholar by e-Review of Tourism Research. She is also a proud volunteer administrator of Women Academics in Tourism (WAiT).