With misinformation and greenwashing rife in tourism, Behind The Green interviews take it back to basics. Back to storytelling. Hear from the visionaries behind the world’s best sustainable travel experiences and the leading thinkers who help us to reimagine, reset, and reinvent travel.
Written by Rebecca Woolford
Inspire Inclusion this International Women’s Day
One of the biggest challenges and opportunities for tourism in 2024 (and beyond) is to rethink the goal and shift the purpose from simply growing in size to becoming better in outcome; to enable ALL players and partakers: travellers, hosts, employees, suppliers, guides – both men and women – to all thrive.
We can talk about ‘sustainable travel’ until we are blue in the face, the reality is that unless more stakeholders wake up and address gender inequality, rife in tourism, it’s not just the women who will continue to suffer.
When women are suppressed, all of society suffers.
“I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.”
Isabel Allende
International Women’s Day 2024 asks us to #InspireInclusion and so in this special ‘Behind the Green’ interview we caught up with JoAnna from Rooted, an award-winning writer and speaker, to explore why empowering women matters.
JoAnna Haugen enjoying writing and hiking.
Take us back in time to where it all started. How did you become an award-winning writer and speaker in sustainable tourism?
“It all started back in 2009 when I decided to quit my corporate job and become a freelance writer.
I lived in Las Vegas at the time, where I cut my teeth in a destination that thrives on tourism. In that romanticised space, I witnessed a lot of questionable practices; and I also navigated these ethics in travel writing, on press trips, or when visiting destinations in which I was invited to swim with dolphins or in which I experienced tension and discomfort on a memorable community tourism excursion in Mexico.
As a travel writer, I just did like many writers do today, I wrote the things that I thought I was supposed to write about. I created a pretty picture of what tourism is and fed back into the industry a lack of transparency.
I remember one day getting a press release called: Top X Instagrammable places to go, I remember thinking this is not what we need more of in this world. I was also seeing a culmination of negative impacts on the communities around the world dealing with tourism. That’s when I decided to create Rooted, to better support the changes we need to see in the tourism industry.
Today we need better, more accurate storytelling. We need to challenge the status quo and stop upholding colonial ideals in tourism. Rather than see carbon offsets as the solution, we need to look at the challenges communities all around the world now face. And so through my writing and work, I love to uncover local solutions that are addressing global challenges. There’s so much power in learning about the people who are already making positive changes.”
Keen to bridge the knowledge-action gap in your business, but not sure where to start? Discover inspiring case studies, gain new insight and blueprints all here.
JoAnna Haugen on some of her many travels.
Speaking of the impact tourism brings to communities around the world. Community-based tourism is something we are all seeing and hearing about more often. Does this mean it’s all moving in the right direction?
“More and more travel companies are realising a need to focus on ‘local’ and the impact tourism brings, which can be a good thing. But there are a couple of problems with this big focus on ‘locals’ that I’d like to unpack.
First of all tourism-based marketing teams are starting to use this idea of local because it is appealing and trending. It’s super nuanced as there’s a lack of clarity about what ‘local’ means and who benefits.
Are the local people those who have ancestral ties and claims to the land? Are they the people who pay taxes? Are they people who physically live in a neighborhood? Do they have to meet all of those qualifications?
I am an American citizen, I live in Tunisia. I have lived here for three years. I own a car. I don’t speak the local language very well. Am I a local?
Community tourism is very popular right now, which can lead to commodifying the local place, the culture, and the people. We should instead be focusing on community benefits, not extracting or exploiting.
The terminology ‘community-based’ is more commonly heard, but shouldn’t it be community-led? It might seem like a subtle change, but this helps us to ask questions like:
- Who designed the travel experience?
- Who decides how tourism is going to show up or not in the space?
- Who are the decision-makers, who is benefiting, and how?
Decolonizing tourism requires a shift in power and control, and using ‘local’ as a means to market a place without transparency and clarity is highly problematic.”
Being a month in which we celebrate women internationally, let’s talk about gender equality in tourism. What do we mean by it and why is it important?
“In tourism, we’re talking about ACCESS to the benefits of tourism. Those benefits can be financial. Both in terms of pay if you’re working in tourism, but also capital investments in businesses. Women do not receive the same kind of angel investments that men receive.
According to the World Bank, only one in three small, medium, and large businesses are owned by women. Beyond this it’s about access to training, access to promotion, both in job positions, but also promotional opportunities, in publications, and so on.
Gender equality in tourism isn’t just about saying, ‘We love and support women’ but ask key questions such as: ‘How are we giving more women access so that there is equality regardless of who is in the room?’
According to a UN report from late 2019, 54% of the tourism workforce is made up of women, but many of these women are clustered in low-skilled jobs like food service and hotel work. The data also shows women contribute to many family-based businesses for little to no pay.
Women make up the vast majority of hospitality and tourism-based roles, but they’re seen in housekeeping and at the front desk; they’re not in decision-making roles or in CEO positions which is where we need to see them. That’s not to say they’re not there at all.
When it comes to media, we need to consider how women are portrayed. Are they the main characters? Are they supporting characters? And also we need to be thinking about the imagery that’s used to depict women in media.
Often, or particularly in the past, we’ve seen a lot of sexualised images of women. They’re the ones in the bikinis in the pools, right? We need to be thinking about how women are portrayed, how they fit into our stories, and ensure that we’re normalising successful, smart women.”
So, not only community-led trips but those which put women’s empowerment front and centre. What inspiring examples can you share with us?
“There are some great examples out there, especially if you look at social enterprises that exist to give women access to tourism benefits and that empower women. Planeterra is an organisation that works with a lot of women’s co-operatives at the grassroots level, helping them to connect to larger companies and tourism itineraries.
I was in the Sacred Valley in Peru last year with G Adventures and on our way to Machu Picchu, we stopped at a women-led initiative in the Sacred Valley where we learned about weaving. We had this amazing opportunity to learn from the local women in this community and purchase their goods if we wanted to.
Thousands of people travel from Cusco to Machu Picchu on this road, the men often work as porters, but the women are forgotten. These towns off to the side are largely ignored and cast aside.
In India, there’s an organisation called Astrostays. There’s another one in Nepal called Community Homestay Network. These homestays are primarily run by women, and both of those organisations have realized the power of connecting travellers with local people’s rich cultural heritage, homes and livelihoods.
Tourism can give women in low-income households the opportunity to interface with travellers keen to connect with a destination. One is Pink City Rickshaw, where you can take a tour with women who’ve never had access to job opportunities before.
I can’t remember the exact statistic but it’s something like when a man earns his paycheck 30 % of that money goes back to his community and his family. And it’s something like 80 % of the income that a woman receives goes directly back into her family and her community.
A woman is more likely to use the money she earns to buy food for her children, send her kids to school, and invest in healthcare for her family.
When we empower a woman or a girl through the lens of tourism we’re not just paying it forward to that individual, it’s likely to support that home, that family, and the wider community. That ripple effect is really powerful!”
According to the United Nations SDGs, sustainability in tourism cannot be achieved without gender equality, would you agree?
“Investing in women is essential if we’re going to embrace holistic wellbeing for both people and the planet. When we support gender equality, which is one of the SDG goals, we are indirectly supporting all the other SDG goals.
Putting women in leadership positions in tourism trickles down into policy making. When we have women in decision-making spaces, they’re going to be mindful of making sure other women are in the room and are heard. Women are more likely to be attuned to things like maternity leave, flexible workspaces, and sexual harassment.
There is also some loose evidence that connects women to more peace. And that’s important as we consider tourism as a lens to heal the world. Women tend to find more peaceful solutions to problems. They’re not as quick to engage as aggressively. When looking at the poly-crisis that we’re now dealing with in the world, there’s something to be said for putting more women in positions of power to help lead the future both in tourism but across all societies, across all industries, in all communities around the world.”
What’s next for JoAnna or Rooted or are they the same thing?
“Part of me is Rooted and Rooted is part of me. What’s next? I’m actively creating more resources.
You know well Rebecca, that collaboration is key when it comes to thinking about the future of tourism. So, I’m focused on community spaces where folks are coming together to share their challenges.
People are welcome to sign up for the Rooted newsletter to stay on top of the many new developments happening. I have some exciting partnerships I’m working on right now, such as a virtual coffee morning which tackles ethical marketing pain points. I already have a responsible travel writing course available but I’m soon to release more courses for travel providers.”
