CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: WOMEN AND TRAVEL, PAST AND PRESENT
CATHERYN KHOO-LATTIMORE1* and ERICA WILSON2
1Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia
2School of Business and Tourism, Southern Cross University, Australia
CONTENTS
1.1 Women on the Move
1.2 Structure of the Book: A Gendered Approach
1.3 Conclusion
Keywords
References
A Lady an explorer? A traveller in skirts?
The notionâs just a trifle too seraphic:
Let them stay and mind the babies, or hem our ragged shirts;
But they mustnât, canât, and shanât be geographic.
(from a cartoon in Punch magazine, 1893, cited in Robinson, 1994, p 1)
1.1 WOMEN ON THE MOVE
In the opening ditty above, published in the British Punch magazine in 1893, we see the satirical rejection of a woman traveling, and the notion reiterated of travel as a primarily masculine venture. During this era, well over 100 years ago, it was not socially acceptable for women to travel, and certainly not on their own, without family or husband. It was around this time, in the late 1800s, where debates were sparking regarding the admission of women as fellows into the Royal Geographic Societyâa debate which raged for over 20 years until 1913, when the Society finally admitted women for the first time (Bell & McEwan, 1996). Despite the controversies among geographical societies, many (Western) women defied societal and gendered conventions by traveling, often solo, and both at home and abroad. They negotiated, resisted, found ways of doing so. And in doing so, they defied traditional ideologies of âwoman,â and âwoman at homeâ (Wilson & Little, 2005).
Moving forward into the twenty-first century, things have changed for womenâand been fought forâin many parts of the world; a recent resurgence in the publication of womenâs travel narratives, for example, attests to the fact that women continue to travel, adventure, move, explore, and pioneer. As we explore later in this Introduction, however, and as also demonstrated by many chapters in this book, women still need to negotiate their freedoms on an everyday basis, let alone when traversing the globe. The stigma around womenâs travelâand womenâs solo travel in particularâstill remains, and womenâs travel more generally remains a site open to discussion, discourse, and problematization.
Within the contemporary tourism industry, women are now widely recognized as a âgrowing forceâ (Äurcic et al., 2009). For example, a significant increase in business travel was recorded among womenâfrom 1% in 1970 to 25% in 1991; and then to almost 50% around a decade later in 2010 (Brownwell, 2011). Consistent with this rise of womenâs participation in business, women not only undertake travels and journeys, but they also make the majority of household decisions on travel choices. Purchasing decisions for vacations, which were once determined by men, are becoming less husband-oriented in more contemporary families as wives are becoming more significant in calling the cards in some of the household aspects, particularly family holidays; research shows that 92% of travel decisions are now made by women (Silverstein & Sayre, 2009).
The leisure and pleasure travel market has also witnessed a rising trend of females in its traveler demographics (Marzuki et al., 2012). Indeed, research shows that women are predominant in some travel markets such as adventure tourism and ecotourism (Cole et al., 2013; Weaver, 2001) but also in volunteer tourism (Mostafanezhad, 2013). There are increasing numbers of females choosing to travel alone and âsoloâ without the assistance or company of partners, husbands or packaged tour groups. The latest statistics by Booking.com indicate that 72% of American women are interested in solo travel while recent studies document the rise of all-women travel (Khoo-Lattimore & Gibson, 2015; Khoo-Lattimore & Prayag, 2015) as a $6 billion market (AAA, 2007). It is also interesting to see this phenomenon reflecting in Asia, where the ratio of male to female travelers has been shifting dramatically in favor of women; from around 90:10 ratio (males to females) 30 years ago, to around 60:40 ratio (males to females) in 2005 (Mastercard, 2005). Many more region-specific reports abound on the increase of womenâs travel, and their travel behaviors, desires, and experiences. For example, a recent Australian report revealed that 60% of the 5000 Australian women polled have been on at least one overseas trip in the past 12 months (Gentle, 2013).
1.2 STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK: A GENDERED APPROACH
The opportunities for women travelers have inadvertently opened up discourses around resistance, independence, empowerment, and individual agency. At the same time, womenâs travel may differ from menâs in many ways; thus it is important to understand female travelersâ motivations, needs, preferences, and behaviors. This book on Women and Travel offers a compilation of work that explores and examines the discourses, debates, and discussions about women, travel, and tourism.
Our book on womenâs travel is built upon the premise that all tourism experiences and activities, like all social, cultural, and political interactions, are gendered. We deliberately foreground womenâs travel as a gendered âphenomenonâ, drawing on Kinnaird and Hallâs proposal of a gender-aware framework, introduced into the tourism discourse over two decades ago (Kinnaird & Hall, 1994, 1996). This framework explicitly recognizes that we do not live in a gender-free society, and that all aspects of society are, inherently, gendered. Operating within and through this framework are gendered tourists, gendered hosts and gendered tourism industries. Under this banner of gender-aware research may sit studies about women, studies about men, but also studies about both men and women and their inter-relationships (Swain, 1995; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994).
Three important works produced in the mid-1990s brought âgenderââand womenâto the forefront of the tourism research agenda. These were a literature synthesis on gender and tourism prepared by Norris & Wall (1994), a special edition on gender and tourism in the Annals of Tourism Research by Margaret Byrne Swain (1995), and a book edited by Kinnaird and Hall (1994) titled âTourism: A Gender Analysis.â Almost a decade later, Pritchard, Morgan, Ateljevic, and Harrisâs Tourism and Gender: Embodiment, Sensuality and Experience re-energized the discussion on women, travel, and embodiment through a critical, gendered lens (Pritchard et al., 2007). While emphasizing womenâs experience as producers and consumers of tourism, these publications also pointed to the interaction of gender with other important social factors, such as ethnicity, class, and race. The authors of these publications called for tourism researchers to consider the importance of the intersectionality between the multiple dimensions and layers of gender and power when studying the social complexities of tourism-related activity.
And very recently, we see renewed studies of gender in tourism, with Small et al. (2015) and Figeuroa-Domecq et al. (2015) finding that despite well over two decades of gender-aware research and recognition, not much seems to have changed. A state of âgender-stagnationâ remains, whereby the majority of papers focusing on or featuring gender remain non-critical, androcentric in focus, and largely gender-blind in both method and academic authorship. In writing this book, we take on Figeuroa-Domecq et al.âs (2015) clarion call to move (again) toward an agenda of âgenderignitionâ, whereby feminist, gender-aware approaches are furthered and embraced (Figeuroa-Domecq et al., 2015). Womenâs travel does not take place in a social, cultural, or political vacuum; it always has, and always will remain, very much a gendered phenomenon.
To provide structure to these varied voices and experiences, we have divided the book into five Sections. These sections cover historical accounts of womenâs travel (Section A, Chapters 2 and 3); issues and constraints faced by women travelers (Section B: Chapters 4â6); gendered approaches to studying womenâs travel (Section C: Chapters 7â9) and contemporary experiences of the female traveler (Section D: Chapters 10â13). The final part, Section E, incorporates two chapters focusing on industry perspectives on womenâs travel (Chapters 14 and 15).
1.2.1 SECTION A: HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF WOMENâS TRAVEL
Travel and pioneering have long been construed as the sole preserve of men (Dann, 1999; Tinling, 1989), with women and their travel achievements generally overlooked in the history of exploration (Towner, 1994). Our opening verse from Punch revealed the level of societal scorn toward Victorian women travelers. Women in the Victorian era were bound by the ethic of care (Gilligan, 1982), relegating them to the primary care for others because of their assumed nurturing abilities. As a result, a woman who chose to travel alone faced criticism for daring to âoutstep her proper sphereâ (Jones, 1997, p. 209), a sphere which was limited to the domestic, the private and the secluded.
We begin this book chronologically, starting with two chapters in Section A dedicated to exploring the historical accounts for (predominantly Western) women travelers. In Chapter 2, Davina Stanford analyzes the writings of early Victorian women travelers, and then compares these themes with the experiences of contemporary female tourist. It is interesting here to see how the historical experiences faced by Victorian women endure today, despite significant shifts in the political and gendered expectations of womenâs role in and contribution to society. In Chapter 3, Jude Wilson writes about the travel experiences of New Zealand women on overseas working holidays in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. These holidays, also referred to in New Zealand as the OE (or overseas experience), were dominated by a female market. Wilson demonstrates how these travelers have added to and impacted on the OE practices today of both women and men. Setting the scene with these two historical chapters, we attempt to redress what has been termed by some historians as âa major omission in the historical recordâ (Towner, 1994; p 725), the omission being womenâs involvement and contribution to travel and tourism.
1.2.2 SECTION B: WOMENâS TRAVEL CONSTRAINTS AND ISSUES
As shown in Section A, while women have been traveling alone for centuries, their explorations were not without constraint, challenge, and resistance. The discussions by Stanford and Jude Wilson on constrictions experienced by early women travelers continue in Section B as we explore the different roles and identities performed by women today. In Chapter 4, Heike A. SchĂ€nzel investigates how the role of woman as mother and primary caregiver intersects with travel for contemporary women. SchĂ€nzelâs chapter offers an understanding on how motherhood in particular impacts on womenâs attitude toward and feelings about family holiday time. Her findings reveal that similar to early womenâs travel, women today must continue to resist an enduring âmotherhoodâ discourse. In doing so, these women construct for themselves, and arguably for women after them, a new definition of what it is to be a âgood motherâ on holiday.
Moving away from a Western perspective, we see the next two chapters explore womenâs travel constraints from a Brazilian and Iranian (Muslim) perspective, respectively. In Chapter 5, Gisele Carvalho, Carlos Costa, Maria Manuel Baptista, and Fiona Bakas explore Brazilian womenâs performances in independent travels. While all young, adult, and mature women saw the benefits of travel for the development of the self, they also experienced negative feelings of fear and of being sexualized, harassed, disrespected, and humiliated. They attributed these discouraging experiences partly to public stereotypes portraying Brazilian women as being âsexually appealing.â In Chapter 6, the authors set out to enlighten readers on womenâs travel from the Muslim world. As an Iranian Muslim woman herself, Rokhshad Tavakoli applies her own experiences, observations, and reflections to the issues surrounding travel for Iranian women. Together with her co-author Paolo Mura, they provide readers with a detailed overview of the historical and political ...