Women Empowerment through Community-based and Rural Tourism: An Actor-network Perspective

Abstract

Women empowerment has dominated discussions at local and global scales. Development
organizations are continuously translating issues of women empowerment into their practices
seeking more efficient strategies to achieve women empowerment. Community-based
and rural tourism has presented a complex situation with numerous chances in fulfilling this
task albeit with challenges. The challenges include those that are directly produced by
women’s involvement in the tourism sector such as; sexual exploitation and human
trafficking, disparities in payments between men and women employed in tourism, caging
women in domestic like jobs such as housekeeping, and catering among others. Other
challenges such as climate change affect women and tourism and thus have a significant
implication for women empowerment through tourism. This paper uses the actor-network
concept of ordering as a methodological lens to view the intricate nature of women
empowerment through tourism. Other than condemn tourism for creating such challenges,
this paper argues that actually, tourism illuminates the challenges that have always existed in
covert ways. Therefore, by addressing these challenges that is; internalizing the externalities
and engaging with emerging issues such as climate change, community tourism can be used
innovatively to usher in another ordering phase that will reaffirm women’s abilities and
potential seniority in dealing with global challenges. The ordering phase would connect as many
women dominated entities, such as agriculture, into community-based tourism.

Keywords: community-based tourism, women empowerment, actor networks, ordering