SDG 5: Gender Equality and How We're Integrating It in Our Trips
Women's economic empowerment is essential to protecting women's rights and making progress in gender equality. Women's rights are human rights. It is important for the economic sector to open up industries like tourism and travel to be more inclusive towards hiring female employees, female owned businesses, and micro-start ups.
What does women's economic empowerment look like? It involves the following series of criteria which we have listed below:
It includes women's' abilities to participate equally in inclusive markets that are part of the national economy,
Access to and control over sustainable and necessary resources
Access to decent and safe work where they do not feel physically and emotionally at risk
Having greater agency and voice in the economic policies that affect them from a local to institutional level.
Greater Opportunities for Women in Tourism
Women are an untapped source of great potential and talented workforce that can contribute to thriving economies both in their local communities and the global economy. Given access to the right opportunities and resources, women can do anything; from being successful entrepreneurs and business leaders to supporting increased productivity in industries like agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, and more. The sustainable tourism sector is no exception to this and there are many benefits that come with women being integrated in this industry.
The UNWTO (United Nations World Trade Organization) explains that tourism provides a wide variety of advantages for women, some of which include employment opportunities for increased household income, entrepreneurship, and pathways to leadership empowerment for women and girls in their communities. Tourism organizations that intentionally recruit women and engage with female owned businesses and services in the local travel destinations are paving the way for not just sustainable travel, but also contributing to greater gender equality in this space.