by Frank Martin

“Women are pearls of Eden,” says an old Cuban song. Now they have also become jewels for the reopening of international tourism.

Efforts around the world to boost the tourism industry hit for two long years by the global pandemic and now threatened by war in Ukraine have attracted highly trained women specialists who are helping the world’s top tourist destinations return to business. business.

The role of women in the entertainment industry has been growing little by little, not without difficulties, in recent decades and now it’s coming for more.

In 2018, during a conference in Paraguay, the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili, defended the incidence of women in world tourism and called for greater recognition of women.

“I want to reiterate UNWTO’s commitment and my own, as Secretary-General, to gender equity,” said Pololikashvili at the opening of the International Seminar on the Empowerment of Women in the Tourism Sector, which coincided with the 63rd Meeting of the UNWTO. Commission for the Americas.

At that time, near the beginning of the global epidemic, the planetary tourism sector employed only 10% of the global workforce. Pololikashvili called on the entertainment industry not to remain “idle” in the fight for women’s equality and development.

The head of the UNWTO Ethics and Social Responsibility Program, Marina Diotallevi, expanded on the tourist data provided by Pololikashvili at that meeting and recalled that “the sector’s income accounts for 10% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and represents 7 % of world exports”

She mentioned a fundamental consequence of it; “Improving the conditions of women who work in tourism affects the lives of their families and the world”, she recalled and regretted that they earn between 10% and 15% less than men.

Be that as it may, in 2018 Latin America and the Caribbean were the world regions with the highest percentage of female employment in the sector.” Latin America, along with Africa, was one of the regions with the highest proportion of Ministries of Tourism headed by women.

More recently, in 2021 at the height of the pandemic, a European analysis opined that women are the backbone of the industry and the cornerstone of growth, demonstrating enormous strength and resilience in times of crisis.

“They are born leaders in a landscape that has always been full of exceptional women doing extraordinary things, driving many of the strategies that have allowed hotel brands to overcome the critical challenges presented by the pandemic,” was a criterion of the aforementioned analysis.

Another finding was that more and more women are moving into tourism and hospitality as owners and stakeholders, as well as running tourism authorities and industry associations.

The women’s war against the pandemic is already strong.

Covid-19 did not diminish that participation. Published studies indicate that this period of confinement did not intimidate women tourism experts who help launch new strategies and improve destinations that suffered strong negative impacts during the period.

The trends that oppose this participation in the industry, especially the so-called sexist ones, are currently “fought” with the recognized female efficiency, especially when it comes to electing managers in the sector.

UNWTO has declared its clear commitment to promoting equality between men and women, empowering women, and eliminating gender disparities in education

An example is that of Quintana Roo, in Mexico, where the Mexican Caribbean has among its objectives to promote inclusive tourism, as Leonor Villafaña Caballero, president of the Association of Executive Women of Tourism Companies (AFEET) recently explained to the press.

“We are going to invite companies that provide tourist services to adapt their facilities to provide better care to those visitors who have a disability,” she declared.

Experts stress that the urgent needs of the universal tourism industry could not be resolved without the wise and delicate help of women.