Gender, work, and tourism in the Guatemalan Highlands

Abstract

While much of modern tourism research centers on the tourist as a leisure consumer, workers are frequently overlooked. Despite a recent uptick in attention to tourism work, the primary focus remains on employee’s skills and qualifications. In contrast, the key contextual factors of race, ethnicity, and gender that surround tourism work are seldom examined. This comparative study addresses the theme of traditional gender roles, particularly in patriarchal societies, and how they affect tourism work. Specifically, it investigates how the presence of tourism influences cultural norms determining appropriate jobs for men and women. Utilizing an ethnographic field research approach, data were collected from participants in two indigenous Maya communities in Guatemala, each with differing models and lengths of tourism development. Free-listing exercises were used to elicit residents’ perceptions of employment as it relates to gender in their community and cultural consensus analysis was used to analyze the data. Results show that neither community shares consensus on jobs for women and only one community shares consensus on men’s jobs. Results suggest that tourism disrupts cultural norms related to gender roles; yet this may not always benefit women.

Keywords:

• Free-listing
• cultural consensus
• gender
• employment
• tourism
• women

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Tourism Cares and Holland America.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chantell LaPan

Chantell LaPan is an Assistant Professor in the Sustainable Tourism & Hospitality program at UNC Greensboro. Her research focuses on micro-entrepreneurship and tourism, with a particular interest in rural tourism development. She received a PhD in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management as well as a Master of International Studies Degree from North Carolina State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Duarte B. Morais

Duarte B. Morais is an Associate Professor and Tourism Extension Specialist at NC State University, and the lead in(ve)stigator of People-First Tourism Lab. He examines how tourism microentrepreneurship can be used by underserved communities to resist dependence and gain agency over their livelihoods and their natural and cultural resources.

Tim Wallace

James M. “Tim” Wallace, Associate Professor Emeritus, recently retired (January 2019) as the Director and Associate Professor of the Anthropology Program in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. He was also the “Chief Instigator” and Director, for 25 years, of the NCSU Ethnographic Field School, located in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. He is President of the Association of Senior Anthropologists at the American Anthropological Association and a past president the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA) and founding chair of the Society for Applied Anthropology's Tourism and Heritage Interest Group. Recent published research concerns issues of tourism micro-entrepreneurship, ecotourism and heritage related projects in Madagascar, Hungary, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Colombia. He continues to collaborate in teaching and research with colleagues in Industrial Design at the Universidad Tadeo Lozano, Bogota. He has over 75 published books, journal articles, and book chapters, and hundreds of conference presentations. He is also a co-founder of People-First Tourism, Inc.

Carla Barbieri

Carla Barbieri, Ph.D., is a Professor in Sustainable Tourism at North Carolina State University where she founded and leads the Agritourism and Societal Well-being lab. She investigates tourism in agricultural settings as a sustainable development strategy.

Myron F. Floyd

Myron F. Floyd is Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. He studies impacts of Race and ethnicity in the contexts of leisure and park and protected area management.