Assessing the role of women in tourism related sectors in the Caribbean

Abstract

This study contributes to the rapidly growing literature on women in tourism. It focuses on a group of 13 Caribbean countries. The study analyses the impact of women in apical positions within firms (top manager or owner) on firm performance-productivity, profitability and female employment. For this both a decomposition model and the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) estimator are used. The analysis finds that opportunities for women in these positions in the Caribbean are constrained to less productive and profitable firms, as elsewhere. However, those firms with females at the top employ more women, particularly in management roles.

Foreign ownership and firm performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Results of GDP per capita confirm their mixed findings in existing studies (Chauvet and Jacolin, 2017;Pastore et al 2020). The relationship between GDP per capita, domestic demand of goods/services and the export performance of firms is often dependent on the degree of transition reforms in countries.…”

A Tale of Parallel Processes of Gender (In-)Equality: How Big is the Glass Ceilings for MENA Women?

“…Moreover, it is likely that the public sector for institutional reasons and the sectors most exposed to international competition, including tourism, may tend to discriminate less against women. This is evidence already found in some previous studies relative to the tourism industry in Turkey (see Cave and Kılıç, 2010) and other developing countries (for Latin America, see Pastore et al, 2021). Generally speaking, in developing countries, woman who work in the tourism related jobs are not inclined to hold high skilled jobs, but in the case of Caribbean countries, female managed or owned firms tend to hire more frequently women also in intermediate managerial positions.…”

The effect of tourism on gender equality in the labour market: Help or hindrance?

“…There is also evidence suggesting that tourism brings increased opportunities for women's entrepreneurship Field (Aghazamani & Hunt, 2017;Pritchard, 2014) due largely to the sector's low start-up costs. In many countries, the share of women-led businesses in tourism is higher than that for other sectors (Pastore et al, 2020). For instance, in Latin America, over 50 per cent of tourism businesses are owned by women -more than twice the share found in other sectors (International Finance Corporation, 2017).…”