Publication: Gender Assessment of the Gambian Tourism Sector
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2024-10-30
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2024-10-30
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Tourism offers significant opportunities for women’s participation, entrepreneurship, and leadership compared to other sectors, but there are challenges to address. The gender assessment of the tourism sector in the Gambia documents gender disparities and key issues hindering women’s participation and earnings in tourism through the lens of employment, entrepreneurship, and leadership. The assessment also examines cross-cutting factors such as policy and institutional environment, education, and social norms, which impact women’s economic opportunities in the sector and influence their decision to enter and remain in the sector. Despite women showing strong interest in hospitality, reflected in higher enrollment rates than men in tourism and hospitality institutes, this is not translating into higher employment shares due to a combination of key supply- and demand-side barriers. In tourism entrepreneurial activities, most women-owned businesses face challenges in skills development, securing finance, accessing tourism segments and markets, and are further limited by a lack of infrastructure and testing labs. In terms of tourism education, while women are the majority of students in formal tourism programs, they largely lack the high-level and soft skills training needed for career progression, and the school primarily serves the workforce level in hospitality, pointing to an opportunity for new curriculum development in The Gambia. Key to supporting Gambian women in tourism will be to the creation of a safer work environment, better policies and strong enforcement.
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“World Bank. 2024. Gender Assessment of the Gambian Tourism Sector. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42332 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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