UN Tourism has joined together public and private sector actors to commit to take concrete steps to advance women’s empowerment in tourism.
The “Almaty Call to
Action” comes out of the First Regional Conference on the Empowerment of
Women in Tourism in Europe and women’s empowerment workshops which have
taken place in Almaty, Kazakhstan from 22-23 October. It will serve as a
catalyst towards gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls,
reflecting the objectives of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.
UN Tourism Executive
Director Zoritsa Urosevic said: “Tourism is one of the world’s most vital
economic sectors, and a key source of employment and opportunity for women. But
still, inequalities persist across the sector, The Almaty Call to Action is a clear
signal of where and how to do more and do better, and to make sure tourism
embraces and empowers women and girls everywhere.”
Diyar Askarov,
Director of Almaty Tourism Bureau, added: “We are not holding this conference
for the sake of the event itself. It is part of a larger, long-term project
aimed at driving real change. It includes training sessions with UN
Tourism-certified coaches, a video series highlighting women in tourism, and a
range of online and offline programs designed to move us from discussion to
concrete action. Our goal is for this conference to mark the beginning of
systemic change – more opportunities for women, more equality, and more
professional growth. Everyone is welcome to register and take part so that
together, we can move tourism forward.”
Six areas to
advance women’s empowerment in tourism
While tourism offers
huge opportunities for women's economic and social empowerment, the high-level
discussions at the Conference also made clear the inequalities that remain in
the sector, with women often found in lower‐paid, lower‐skilled and informal
employment. Advances in closing the gender wage gap, bridging the digital
divide and ensuring gender parity in leadership remain limited and the huge
burden of unpaid domestic care work that women shoulder was a recurring theme.
The Almaty Call to
Action signaled a shared commitment to drive change in six key areas:
1. Employment
- Take measures to tackle the gender pay gap
in tourism
- Challenge gender-stereotypes in tourism
employment
- Strengthen outreach efforts and
initiatives to attract women to careers in employment where women are
currently underrepresented such as transport, rural guiding and technical
roles
- Implement comprehensive policies that
clearly define and prohibit Gender Based Violence and harassment
- Require tourism businesses to report on
their progress towards gender equality.
2. Entrepreneurship
- Devise and implement initiatives that
enable and support women's entrepreneurship, for example through training
and education, financial capital and grants, or incentives and tax
benefits
- Work to ensure that women's tourism
businesses can become formalized, if they wish to be, and contribute to
women's financial inclusion
- Expand and diversify women's market access
and fair trade for their tourism products and services through
gender-responsive procurement
- Expand women's access to digital
technologies, including digital tourism platforms
3. Leadership,
policy and decision-making
- Collaborate on improving women's
professional development opportunities through professional networks,
mentorship programs and leadership training
- Develop policies that facilitate women's
entrepreneurship, access to finance and technology, career progression
- Implement gender-mainstreaming by
conducting gender analyses, consulting civil society actors and
integrating a gender perspective into all phases of the tourism policy and
programme cycle.
- Respecting the principles of international
conventions, policies and frameworks on gender equality and decent work,
including ILO Decent Work Conventions and UN Tourism Framework Convention
on Tourism Ethics
4. Education and
training
- Increase girl's and women's access to
education and training needed to enter the tourism sector, in particular
STEM education to facilitate entry into more technical employment
- Support the up-skilling and re-skilling of
women throughout their careers through life longer learning
- Provide targeted training and support to
enable women's progression into more senior and higher paying roles
- Implement and provide resources for
gender-equality educational programmes and incentivise training
participation from industry
5. Community and
civil society
- Introduce measures to improve women's
work-life balance in tourism and encourage an equal division of unpaid
care work in tourism communities.
- Ensure gender equality and human rights
commitments at the national level are met and implemented effectively.
- Create and collaborate with women's
tourism networks and associations to advance gender equality initiatives
and support
6. Measurement for
better policies
- Systematically produce and publish tourism
data that is disaggregated by sex in-line with the UN Tourism 'Measuring
the Sustainability of Tourism' statistical framework
- Regularly provide tourism data disaggregated by sex to UN Tourism -TradeArabia News Service