ABSTRACT
Some scholars have pointed to the importance of gaining an understanding of how gender relations shape, and are shaped by, tourism processes over time, and how gender relations inform issues of inequality and control in tourism (Aitchison, 2001; Kinnaird & Hall, 1996; M. Swain, 1995; Tucker, 2007). Despite the importance of gaining this understanding, the relationships between gender, tourism development and poverty reduction remain little understood. Numerous studies have found that the relative benefits of tourism development reflect already existing inequalities, so elite groups usually dominate tourism development efforts and monopolize the benefits, and these groups usually comprise men (Hitchcock & Brandenburgh, 1990; Scheyvens, 2000; Stonich, Sorensen, & Hundt, 1995). Moreover, it is broadly understood that in many contexts, women miss out on the employment opportunities and related benefits of tourism development due to the culturally defined, normative notions of gender identity, roles and relations (Scheyvens, 2000; Tucker, 2007). Some pro-poor tourism development projects, therefore, have deliberately targeted women’s “economic empowerment” by encouraging and supporting women’s involvement in small and micro-enterprises (Ferguson, 2010a). The intention of such “empowerment”
t , Dunedin, New Z aland
is to establish a process “by which those who have been denied the ability to make choices acquire such ability” (Kabeer, 2005, p. 13). Undoubtedly, such “empowerment” is far from straightforward, however, as it is a process that demands significant change.
