Gender Tourism Fun

While contemporary popular discourses dismiss gender and feminism as passé, patriarchy and sexism continue to limit human possibilities around the globe. The tourism industry can be a force for empowerment but it can also shore up exploitative gendered practices. At the same time, tourism enquiry itself continues to be dominated by western, masculinist approaches. This collection of studies seeks to advance feminist and gender tourism studies with its focus on embodiment. Broad themes include the construction of narratives, how discourses of desire, sensuality and sexuality pervade the tourism experience, the use of the body to represent femininity, masculinity and sensuality, and finally how travel and tourism allow for empowerment, resistance and carnivalesque opportunities.

Gender and Tourism: Challenges and Entrepreneurial Opportunities provides a comprehensive collection of new insights for traditional paradigms, approaches and methods, as well as exploring more recent developments in research methodology in the context of gender and tourism studies.

Does tourism empower women working in and producing tourism? How are women using the transformations tourism brings to their advantage? How do women, despite prejudice and stereotypes, break free, resist and renegotiate gender norms at the personal and societal levels? When does tourism increase women's autonomy, agency and authority? The first of its kind this book delivers: A critical approach to gender and tourism development from different stakeholder perspectives, from INGOs, national governments, and managers as well as workers in a variety of fields producing tourism. Stories of individual women working across the world in many aspects of tourism. A foreword by Margaret Bryne Swain and contributions from academics and practitions from across the globe. A lively and accessible style of writing that links academic debates with lived realities while offering hope and practical suggestions for improving gender equality in tourism. Gender Equality and Tourism: Beyond Empowerment, a critical gendered analysis that questions the extent to which tourism brings women empowerment, is an engaging and thought-provoking read for students, researchers and practitioners in the areas of tourism, gender studies, development and anthropology.

Gay Pride parades are annual arenas of queer public culture, where embodied notions of subjectivity are sold, enacted, transgressed and debated. From Sydney to Rome, Queering Tourism analyses the paradoxes of gay pride parades as tourist events, exploring how the public display of queer bodies - the way they look, what they do, who watches them, and under what regulations - is profoundly important in constructing sexualized subjectivities of bodies and cities. Drawing on extensive collections of interviews, visuals and written media accounts, photographs, advertisements, and her own participation in these parades, Lynda Johnston gives a vibrant account of ‘queer tourism’ in New Zealand, Australia, Scotland and Italy. For each place, she looks at how the relationship between the viewer and the viewed produces paradoxical concepts of bodily difference, and considers how the queered spaces of gay pride parades may prompt new understandings of power and tourism. Examining the intersection of sexuality, space and tourism, and using empirical data gathered at Gay pride parades such as the Sydney Mardi Gras, New Zealand HERO Parade and World Pride Roma 2000, this important work produces a deconstructive account of tourism and presents new ways of thinking through the powerful processes of subjectivity formation.

This book encompasses the diversity and complexity of sex in tourism, incorporating the light, dark and shades of grey in between. It brings together work and ideas from a diverse array of researchers from around the world and examines the affects and effects of diverse sexual encounters in tourism, romance tourism, sex tourism and sexual exploitation in tourism – including the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism, and sexual harassment. Sex in tourism has arguably been an understudied area of research relative to the central roles that sex plays within tourism experiences. This volume explores the complexity and nuanced nature of sex in tourism in more detail. It will be of interest to students and researchers of tourism impacts, tourist behaviour, hospitality management, destination management and development.

Presents research on the roles and importance of tourism, and its interrelationships with governance and development in societies that move from 'authoritarian' to liberal democratic economic and political models, and those adjusting to the accession requirements of an enlarged European Union.

Sexual spaces, normally inhabited by (mostly) female sex workers, are understood as masculine spaces, and positioned for and around male consumers. However, red light zones and public sex performances in both Thailand and Holland are being explored and visually consumed by female tourists in significant numbers. Their presence in red light districts and sexual venues is at odds with the ways in which sexual spaces have normally been positioned. Woman and Sex Tourism Landscapes explores female tourists' interactions with highly sexualized spaces and places in two very different contexts: the Netherlands and Thailand. Addressing this incongruence, this text explores the ways in which these spaces are constructed, and examines the different relations that govern the management of, and female tourist interactions with these liminal,sexual zones. Ethnographic data collected in both countries suggests that far from being male-centred spaces, the red light districts and associated sexual entertainment venues are very much open to female tourists. Drawing on this research the author argues that some women are indeed interested in exploring sexualized zones, challenging assumptions about women’s involvements with sexual space. Thinking specifically about the visual nature of women's sexualized experiences, the analysis draws on a range of different theoretical understandings that address power, privilege, and the gaze. An important contribution to a range of debates, this book will appeal to students and researchers in tourism, geography, sociology, gender studies and cultural theory.

Women and Travel: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives is a fascinating look at the behavior, motivations, experiences, and needs of women as tourists and travellers, drawing on both historic and contemporary eras. Surprisingly little research has explored key issues, experiences, and opportunities in the context of women’s travel. This revealing volume fills this gap, exploring the discourses, debates, and discussions about women, travel, and tourism. With an international roster of contributors from diverse regions of the world, the book celebrates a variety of women’s voices. Khoo-Lattimore and Wilson deliberately sought to include nontraditional and non-Western perspectives on women’s travel, with inclusions of Asian solo female travelers; Islamic women travellers and the constraints placed on them; and women who cannot travel (or choose, for whatever reason, a ‘home holiday’). This enlightening volume brings together scholars from the broad areas of tourism, hospitality, geography, and leisure studies to examine how and why women travel. The chapters bring light to perspectives from different countries, cultures, backgrounds, and religions, and utilize different methods, approaches and styles of presentation. Women and Travel: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives will be of interest to academics and graduate students from a range of disciplines, including tourism, leisure studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, feminist and gender studies, business, economics and management; as well as professionals working in the tourism industry, particularly those with an interest in niche markets and segmentation.

Heritage is a prized cultural commodity in the marketing of tourism destinations. Particular aspects of heritage are often more actively promoted, with others played down. The representation of heritage in tourism as static and timeless, derived since time immemorial from a distant past, is seductive. In Asia, a major part of the tourism market lies in the sale and consumption of highly orientalized images and versions of culture and history. In India’s marketing discourse, the state of Rajasthan symbolizes the nation in its heritage-laden, traditional and most authentic form. These images draw heavily on the British period in India - the Raj. In one sense, this vision of Rajasthan is ennobling, highlighting moments of cultural pride. In another sense, it demeans, by omitting and obscuring salient features of contemporary life. This fascinating book explores the cultural politics of tourism through interdisciplinary perspectives. Carol E. Henderson and Maxine Weisgrau demonstrate that tourism heritage privileges elite histories that recapitulate colonial relationships, compelling non-elites to collude in these narratives of subordination even as they advance their own alternative visions of history.