Through NGO Lens: Gendering the Tourism Curriculum

Abstract

Tourism has been promoted as a vehicle for female empowerment [1]. This is in line with UNWTO's project in 2011 that suggested that tourism could specifically help attain the third millennium development goal: the promotion of gender equality and women empowerment [2]. To date, Women in Tourism as an NGO found out that only 0.3% of tourism universities and institutions in Indonesia currently adopt gender curriculum in its subject. If tourism were to ambitiously become a vehicle for female empowerment, we argue that capacitating the future tourism workforce should start in classroom by infusing gender mainstreaming that adopting a feminist approach in tourism studies. Thus, in contrast to the reality that does not reflect the ideal of the tourism industry yet, Women in Tourism Indonesia held an intensive program which aims to disseminate gender equality to foster creative innovation and promote inclusive development, which later hopes to empower women in the Indonesian tourism industry. This program that was taught in five intensive classes was attended by 45 female and 5 male students throughout Indonesia. The motivation for this paper is to explore the case study; output of the program descriptively by using pre-test and post-test carried out by all the participants to measure the effectiveness of our program. Reflectively with our own practice, we also highlight the potential future strategies for academicians.