This report seeks to redress this balance through three key areas of recommendations.
- Create and foster a culture of an open dialogue where issues of gender can be freely discussed by all employees, irrespective of gender, leading to an inclusive and equal organisational culture
- The patriarchal norm in organisational practices and culture should be challenged and the structure and training of organisations should be reimagined through a less patriarchal gaze
- Hospitality education institutions should integrate the subject of gender into tourism and hospitality curriculums.
According to a 2019 World Tourism Organization report, women account for more than 50% of the labour workforce but earn 14.7% less than men and hold less than one fifth of leadership roles in the tourism industry – particularly the hospitality sector.
This research advocates for a major shift in an organisational culture of hospitality businesses to redirect its focus to a more inclusive and equal work environment. Employees need to feel able to discuss gender-related issues among one another as well as with their employers or line managers to reduce the stigma attached to that subject. The authors call for creating a culture of an open dialogue based on an inclusive listening environment that can be enabled through different group techniques, such as a participation in the LEGO Serious Play, collectively drawing a mandala or the 360-degree feedback. A shift in organisational culture can be also supported with an appointment of a lead for diversity and inclusion agenda, a compulsory unconscious bias training, known to destabilise existing organisational structures.
The paper pays particular notice to traditional masculinity determining gender norms, gender divisions, social expectations, and everyday practices which, the research says, should be challenged. The authors argue that the idea of diversifying masculinity and alternative masculinity should be promoted to sustain gender equality as well as suggesting other changes, such as career progress criteria or appraisals being revisited to include both masculine and feminine leadership traits.
The authors argue that some changes needed to occur before a person enters the hospitality workplace. By choosing to shift to a gender-conscious curriculum design, the emphasis will create a commonplace where gender (in)equality can be talked about. Through incorporating gender as an element to be discussed throughout the module (gender mainstreaming) and/or creating contents focusing on specific issues of gender (in)equality within a module (gender specialising), students are encouraged to acknowledge and reflect upon gender issues present in the hospitality and tourism industry
Wenjie Cai, University of Greenwich, said:
Although gender issues have received quite a lot of attention in the past few years, I found there is still too little been done in practice. I believe in tackling the issue of gender equality fundamentally, so we need to have a holistic approach and involves multiple stakeholders working together. We have focused on these three elements because we believe the issues can only be fundamentally addressed through educations, listening and inclusive environment, and men's supports. Each of these dimensions also connects a series of aspects required to make a change ranging from societal opinions of gender roles, labour division at home, organisational culture and leadership traits, as well as policy-making and legislation.
Dr Maria Gebbels from University of Greenwich
In comparison to other sectors, the hospitality industry has a long-standing history of being male-dominated, traditional, and paternalistic resulting in conflicts of power and gender inequality. Despite women making up 60% of the total industry workforce, they continue being under presented at the senior management, leadership and board levels, although some but insufficient improvements have been observed at the non-executive director (NED) level. This leads to at least one conclusion that women tend to be employed at the lower, junior-level roles then struggling to break the glass-ceiling to top management positions. Those who manage still belong to a minority. Issues of gender become very visible in situations when women take on caring responsibilities whether for elderly relatives or children, and many operational roles within the industry do not offer the full range of different flexible working arrangements.
Dr Xiongbin Gao from University of Surrey
Our action-oriented reflection on women's career development in hospitality provides holistic recommendations that addresses to multiple stakeholders such as hospitality businesses, educational institutions and policymakers. Not only can the adaptation of these recommendations encourage gender equality in the hospitality industry, it may well be an important step to tackle the long-standing gender labour division that continues to shape gender relations in our society.
