Tourism, technology and gender equality futures

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be reached by 2030 in an attempt to better the lives of people across the world. Among the SDGs are the eradication of extreme poverty, the ending of hunger and malnutrition and the ensuring that all humans have access to safe drinking water. One key component of the SDGs regarded as important in the contribution to sustainable development (UN, 2022) is gender equality, which represents SDG5. Specifically, SDG5 aims to end discrimination and violence against women and ensure women’s participation in leadership and decision-making as well as access to health. It also aims at promoting women’s equal rights to economic resources and benefits and encouraging women's empowerment through technology and legislation. A noteworthy aspect of this is one target that references “the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women” (UN, 2022), a clear indicator that the SDGs contain the embedded message that technologies have the power to transform society in positive ways by promoting gender equality.

In this paper, we argue that tourism technologies can facilitate this transformation towards greater gender equality. Tourism was acknowledged as a vehicle for achieving the SDGs (Boluk et al., 2019). Indeed, tourism can be a catalyst for positive change towards the achievement of the SDGs and, thus, help communities to enhance their well-being and quality of life. In relation to gender equality, tourism was found to minimise inequalities between genders, as it may empower women through employment, entrepreneurial activity and travel (Figueroa et al., 2022; Rinaldi and Salerno, 2020; Yang et al., 2018). A burgeoning number of studies are emerging that investigate gender issues in tourism (Efthymiadou and Farmaki, 2023a), primarily examining how tourism contributes to gender equality. These studies discuss the ways in which tourism can improve gender equality for female tourism employees, travellers and destination residents and conclude that gender equality is an important indicator of sustainable tourism (Alarcón and Cole, 2019). Despite the important insights offered by the tourism gender literature, SDG5 remains underresearched (Boluk et al., 2024). A notable omission is research on the role of tourism technologies in promoting gender equality. The lack of research on the tourism technologies and gender equality interface is surprising considering the important role that technology plays in tourism. Amidst the current transformation occurring in tourism, in light of the emergence of automation technology and artificial intelligence in the industry (Solakis et al., 2024), discussion on how tourism technologies can contribute to gender equality is timely.

This opinion piece aims to respond to this research gap and discuss how tourism, as an industry and cultural practice, can adopt technologies to work in ways to promote the status of women in society and, by extent, assist in progressing the general goal of gender equality. Specifically, we aim at making recommendations in regard to the technologies that may be used in tourism to help progress towards the goal of gender equality. In so doing, we contribute to extant literature, which remains largely silent about the role of tourism technologies in gender equality. This contribution is largely focused upon how technology in the tourism ecosystem most directly impacts on women in the industry, from both the supply and demand sides of the equation. In addition, as there is good reason to believe that tourism has a positive impact upon the empowerment of women in host communities (Cone, 1995), it is likely that the discussion in this paper will yield important insights to destination planners regarding the improvement of gender equality at the destination level, thus strengthening the progress towards sustainable development.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. First, we provide a review of the literature on gender in tourism. Then, we discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and gender equality before focusing discussion on future developments with regard to tourism’s role in achieving gender equality and the role technologies will play in attaining the desired outcomes of the SDGs in regard to gender equality.

Gender was long ago recognised as a critical issue in tourism research. This is not surprising, as women constitute around 54% of the tourism workforce (World Bank, 2019). Indeed, the tourism industry is argued to present a suitable context for employment, leadership and entrepreneurial activity that offer women flexibility and more job opportunities than many other sectors, especially in developing nations (WTTC, 2019). Likewise, tourism was recognised as empowering women travellers (Yang et al., 2018). Thus, tourism presents itself as an important contributor to gender equality. This is reflected in the increasing number of tourism studies (Figueroa-Domecq and Segovia-Perez, 2020; Je et al., 2022) investigating the role of tourism in minimising inequalities between men and women and promoting gender equality among tourism employees and travellers. The development of the gender tourism literature is better understood through an observation of the evolution of the waves of feminism.

The first wave of feminism is noted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where the focus was on suffrage and women’s rights. The second wave of feminism unfolded in the 1960s, where various social and cultural forces recognised the awareness of minority groups and placed the discussion of gendered power relations in a context of race, class and sexuality (Pritchard, 2014). The third wave, underpinned by post-structuralism theory, emerged in the 1990s, emphasising intersectionality while acknowledging the link between socio-cultural relations and material and symbolic representations of power (Aitchison, 2005). In tourism research, a gender perspective was invisible until 1970, when international tourist arrivals began to grow rapidly in light of the popularity of mass tourism. From 1970 to 1990, most tourism scholars followed the “add women and stir” strategy in research whereby they simply considered the gender variable in studies related to consumer behaviour (Swain, 1995). A feminist gender approach was only popularised in the mid-1990s as efforts were undertaken to understand women's experiences and attitudes in issues pertaining to tourism development, host-tourist relationships and identity. In this context, Figueroa-Domecq et al. (2015) report that relevant studies focused on gendered tourists examining motivations and behaviours of women travellers (e.g. Anderson and Littrell, 1995; Jeffreys, 2003), gendered hosts investigating primarily the relationship between tourism development and gender such as women resident perceptions as well as entrepreneurship (e.g. Boley et al., 2017; Khoo et al., 2023) and gendered labour focusing on women’s employment issues (e.g. Gentry, 2007; Hutchings et al., 2020).

Although these studies recognise the important role of women in tourism and their increasing participation in tourism activities, they also highlight the persistent existence of gender inequalities. For example, gender stereotypes still exist in tourism, which leads to many women employees working in low-skilled and low-paid positions considered women’s work, such as housekeeping (Dashper, 2020). Likewise, there are fewer women managers than men in tourism and hospitality (Carvalho et al., 2018), whereas women tend to be paid less than men for the same type of job performed. In addition, women are more likely to find it difficult to balance job and work commitments due to them being the primary family carers. Last, women are more likely to fall victim to male tourists, especially in poor developing destinations, where sex tourism is popular (Brooks and Heaslip, 2019). In light of these inequalities, and following calls for action by tourism scholars and practitioners to encourage gender equality in tourism, the creation of the non-governmental organisation “Equality in Tourism” – an institutional actor that supports programmes to encourage gender equality in the tourism economy – was witnessed.

In this context, the importance of gender equality was emphasised in tourism gender literature, attracting further academic interest following the inclusion of gender equality as an SDG in the UN’s Agenda 2030. Specifically, gender equality was recognised as imperative for sustainable development in tourism (Alarcón and Cole, 2019). It is generally accepted that for gender equality to be achieved, women need to become empowered (Grown et al., 2005). Correspondingly, a significant number of studies looking into the role of tourism in women empowerment have accumulated. These studies can be divided into three research streams. First, research examining how women’s employment and entrepreneurial activity in tourism contributes to their empowerment (e.g. Duffy et al., 2015; Vukovic et al., 2021), reporting positive effects while, simultaneously, recognising continuing discrimination against women (Hutchings et al., 2020), gendered stereotypes and lack of access to resources (Aghazamani et al., 2020; Kimbu et al., 2021) as challenges. Several of these studies draw from alternative tourism forms (i.e. ecotourism and cultural tourism) in developing nations (Panta and Thapa, 2018; Su et al., 2023).

A second line of research deals with how tourism development impacts the empowerment of women residents of a destination (Boley et al., 2017), with recent emphasis also paid on the influence of women empowerment on sustainable tourism (Abou-Shouk et al., 2021; Elshaer et al., 2021). Last, the third research stream on women empowerment and tourism looks at how travel can empower women travellers (Hao et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2018). These studies conclude that solo travel has the potential to empower women, as it appears to represent an act of resistance to gender inequality and a search for meaning and identity. Likewise, through solo travel, women reconstruct identities and gain power by managing risk perceptions.

There is also a more critical strain of research that looks upon tourism and development from a more feminist methodological approach. For example, a recent approach towards the relationship between feminist thinking and tourism development has been suggested by Kalisch and Cole (2022), arguing for the “Feminist Alternative Tourism Economics” (FATE) approach, in which feminist approaches towards ethics and decolonisation can be integrated into an economic system leading to a more gender-just economy that would be integrated into the tourism ecosystem. This is an approach that has already resonated well with others (see, Kimbu et al., 2024). At any rate, there is good reason to believe that critical feminist methodologies have been developing in the field for some time, as Figueroa-Domecq et al. (2015) illustrate.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a reminder that shocks (political, economic or otherwise) to the system may lead to a disproportionate undermining of the well-being of women in many industries. Additionally, it was a catalyst for the increased use of service technologies due to safety concerns and labour shortages. Cole (2018) warned that empowering women is inadequate for gender equality, as it is necessary to also address the structural inequalities prescribing women’s role in society and which diminish their power. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted these structural inequalities and reminds us of the need to promote gender equality holistically while addressing the causes of women's disempowerment. The COVID-19 crisis was acknowledged as affecting women negatively in numerous ways. For example, since women make up the majority of the workforce, women disproportionately bore the brunt of the impact of the pandemic (Kalisch and Cole, 2022), making them vulnerable in employment to such turbulence in the economy (Claudio-Quiroga et al., 2022). In relation to employment and entrepreneurship, women were found to experience more loss of employment and income than men during the pandemic as they often work in the informal sectors of the industry in low-skilled, low-paid jobs (Dempere and Grassa, 2023). Women are also responsible for childcare in many cultures, highlighting challenges in balancing work from home and family caring responsibilities. Evidence also showed that during the pandemic, domestic violence against women increased (Sánchez et al., 2020).

What is noteworthy about the literature is that while there is a vast literature reviewing many issues related to discriminatory treatment and unequal outcomes in regard to gender in tourism, there is a relative lack of literature on the role of technology in enhancing opportunities for women in the industry. This is surprising, given the globally recognised digital gender divide, which refers to the disparity between men and women in regard to accessing and using digital technologies due to a lack of economic resources, education and/or cultural barriers. Indeed, technology-oriented degrees are underrepresented in terms of women students, deepening the digital gender divide further. It has been previously argued that technology, in the right conditions, can eliminate gaps between men and women (Zhang et al., 2014) as it offers opportunities to women in terms of management, employment and entrepreneurship. For example, we see that the increasing representation of women on boards of directors leads to an environment in which the workplace improves the working conditions of women (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2020), especially in relation to access to masculinised positions related to technology. Even though there seems to be some indication of a gap between the two genders in terms of attitudes towards technology, as the literature has generally shown (see Cai et al., 2017), there is also more recent evidence that such a divide may be diminishing (Ayyildiz et al., 2022). Regulation to protect female users against online discrimination is strengthening, while access to digital resources to improve skills and literacy is being encouraged.

In the near future, the increasing importance of service automation technologies will be disruptive and may lead to changes that could increase the status and well-being of women in the tourism ecosystem. For example, automation technologies in the service sector will transfer the service delivery process from the employee to the customer (Ivanov and Webster, 2020), implying that the role of women as both service providers and customers may transform. Overall, within the tourism industry, the introduction of automated technologies may undermine the digital gender divide, empowering women and leads to a workforce that embraces feminist principles.

Tourism can play a role in terms of supporting progress towards SDG5 in a myriad of ways, although there are some clear obstacles that come into play. Since many of the goals are neither very specific nor relevant for all women in the world, there are two different approaches that can be made towards using tourism as a vehicle for the improvement of gender equality. One approach is to think of SDG5 as a general statement, looking for gender equality as a general and amorphous goal, something that may lead to vague moves to tackle vaguely defined problems. Another approach is to think of specific goals that are measurable and can be swiftly rectified via various institutional and cultural changes in the industry in order to achieve various important and attainable goals. It is worth mentioning that the involvement of various stakeholders such as the government and industry practitioners is required should progress towards gender equality be achieved.

First, looking at the specific goals for the SDG5, discrimination against women is a hard thing to quantify and identify in many cases, although there may be situations in which institutional practices prevent discrimination. As a general rule, tourism and related industries have the ability to identify institutional and cultural impediments to the success of women in the workplace and beyond. If women’s experiences are largely missing from management (Kalisch and Cole, 2022), it may be necessary to implement a blunt instrument such as the creation of quotas to ensure adequate representation of women may be in order. While it is a blunt instrument, the hope would be that the outright promotion of women in authority positions would lead to a change in culture that would make the quotas unnecessary in the future. Certainly, the crafting of policies that would favour women in managerial positions should be done with care to avoid any negative consequences (Crosby et al., 2006). Research should investigate methods that can make the most impact while minimising the negative consequences of such programmes designed to benefit the promotion of the status of women in the tourism industry. Technologies, in particular, should be brought into use as analytical tools to identify professional impediments that may be specific to women in the tourism workplace.

Second, the automation technologies that are used may actually increase some undesirable forms of discrimination (Seyitoğlu and Ivanov, 2023), and women may in fact be disadvantaged or discriminated against because of these technologies. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that some technologies may be gender-biased or even racist. For example, the inability of very dark-skinned people to use hand dryers has been noted (Cheuk, 2021), so that many technologies that are used in the tourism industry may be alienating or in subtle ways that may exclude women’s participation. Research should look at ways that technologies impact women’s status and interests differently in the tourism ecosystem with unintended technical or cultural biases. In some ways, it seems that women’s involvement in the development of technologies and a study of the differential impact of technologies in service environments is of value.

Third, there is a global change that will likely lead to a social outcome of increased equality of genders, although it may be somewhat beyond the timeframe of the SDGs. Globally, there is a trend towards smaller families worldwide since there are many methods of birth control, abortion and a general desire for smaller family sizes, especially in wealthier countries (Webster, 2021). Because of this shift, there will likely be changes in the status of women in society, as fewer of them choose the burden of families and thus the traditional role of mother in a family unit and society. Because of this shift leading to smaller families and less reproduction, it is important that research looks into how the modern lifestyle, whether in the tourism industry or outside of it, had led women to be less happy since the time that such data have been gathered (Brakus et al., 2022). With research on this topic, pathways to a far more important and lofty goal beyond SDG5 could be found – the enhancement of the happiness of women in tourism. Because of the decline in human population and the increasing capabilities of technology, research should look at ways that technology will serve not just the material well-being of humans but also fortify the happiness of women and people in general within a tourism context.

Fourth, tourism should look at women as consumers and employees to better determine what they want and need. For example, there seem to be attitudinal and perceptual differences between men and women (Su et al., 2009); therefore, what men and women may expect from a workplace (Perugini and Vladisavljević, 2019) or from a consumer experience (Bakshi, 2012) may be very different. It may well be that women expect something very different from the tourism workplace; thus, scholarly research can investigate this in order to redesign a workplace and work-related experience that can be nurturing and supportive to women employees. Research, specifically, entailing how workplace technologies can be made to become more accessible, enjoyable and practical to women employees, thus empowering and enabling women in tourism and related industries.

Fifth, there is also reason to believe that automation technologies may create opportunities to promote the equality of experiences for women travellers with their masculine counterparts. Technologies for security may embolden many women and make them feel safer in tourism and hospitality settings, even if there is some indication that women are not necessarily more concerned about their security than men (Mura and Khoo-Lattimore, 2012). In fact, some studies illustrate that women travelling internationally tend to be more concerned about health and food than other aspects of security and/or safety (Lepp and Gibson, 2003). The panoply of technologies that will encourage food safety, physical safety and enable improved surveillance will assist in creating a sense of security around the travel experience for women. In addition, portering technologies may decrease the advantage that males have in carrying larger baggage due to the male’s larger physical size, bone density and musculature. In this way, technology is a great equaliser, ensuring increased security in all sorts of ways and eliminating the physical advantages of males.

Finally, technologies should alleviate the household tasks that are generally left to women, even in the modern age and in more advanced economies (Riederer et al., 2019). While the gendered division of labour in the home may likely remain more or less the same for the foreseeable future, much of the labour in the household may be reduced by household technologies. For example, the robotic vacuum cleaner of today may help reduce the burden of household work disproportionately for women in the home. As such, more women may become more willing to engage in tourism employment and/or work from home using sharing economy platforms (i.e. Airbnb) that allow for greater flexibility in employment and empowerment for women in particular (Efthymiadou and Farmaki, 2023b).

We are moving quickly and more deeply into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and one of the major outcomes of this will be a major shift of the entire workforce across all industries (Tschang and Almirall, 2021). One of the hallmarks of the economy in following this revolution will be not just the automation of physical labour but also the automation of decision-making (Ivanov, 2023). A key benefit of this revolution is the chance to programme our economy to be in synch with the values embedded into the SDGs, one of those being the promotion of gender equality. While traditionally the economy has been based upon androcentric power relations, largely overlooking the experience of women (Kalisch and Cole, 2022), there is an opportunity for future tourism to integrate concerns with women’s experience into the programming and performance of tourism and tourism-related industries in the future. Additionally, the technologies can be implemented in ways that reduce the physical strain on women employees and promote equality between genders in the workplace. However, there is also the risk that the jobs that are predominantly done by women may be either made redundant via technology or will remain relatively immune from technologies that make the job of women easier, as, for example, in the case of housekeeping in hotels.

This is an excellent time to ensure that policies informed by the experience of women can be embedded into the tourism ecosystem in ways that inform practices and organisational cultures that lead to better and more beneficial conditions for women. To that end, management should look into getting additional insights into how to transform tourism and hospitality practices away from androcentric visions of the tourism ecosystem. For example, more feminist entrepreneurship and management cultures may see the value in tourism products specifically designed for women only, such as hotels for women or tours designed only for women; thus, the industry will have to better understand the motives and psychology of women to better cater to them (Berdychevsky et al., 2016). Certainly, technologies and better-informed feminist approaches may be able to market more efficiently to women in the industry. In some ways, such policies (consistent with the SDG5) informed by feminist insights and approaches would be relatively easy to incorporate into organisational cultures and pre-existing policies, although the greater culture may subsume and undermine them. For example, while a hotel may offer childcare to its employees to encourage greater engagement of women in the workforce in an enterprise, outside pressures at home or in the community may still discourage women’s participation in an organisation’s management structure.

In many ways, humanity has many opportunities to enhance and support the progress of women in society. The SDGs suggest many goals (some merely aspirational) in regard to gender equality, but they will face cultural challenges, even with some technologies incorporated into tourism playing a progressive and supportive role. Additionally, there may be naturally occurring differences between men and women that may be insurmountable. For example, men tend to view their work as something that is central to their identity (Shen-Miller and Smiler, 2015), and this may be something deeply embedded into the masculine psyche that is not culturally embedded. There may be other factors at play as well such as the general proclivity that men like things and women like people (Su et al., 2009), something that would explain that even when led to their own choice in the most egalitarian societies that exist (in Scandinavia), there are professions that are clearly dominated by either men (engineering) or women (nurses).

While the ability of tourism and its related industries to further help gender equality may be limited, there are also restrictions on specific benchmarks that tourism may assist in the attainment of goals. For example, it is very difficult to ascertain how tourism would work in ways to reduce the practice of female genital mutilation, let alone how technologies could directly combat the practice. However, there are some quick fixes that can contribute such as developing policies to identify sexual and other forms of exploitation, the promotion of women into management positions in enterprises and the support of reproductive rights from employers. While the contribution of tourism to the SDG5 may be conceptualised as baby steps, the contributions could be life-changing for the individuals who benefit from these baby steps in very positive ways and lead to externalities that enhance the appreciation for women in the workforce and elsewhere for years to come.