Employment condition differences based on gender: A case of adventure tourism employees in Gauteng, South Africa.

Abstract

Previous studies show evidence of gender discrepancies in tourism employment, usually to the disadvantage of the women. The tourism industry is notorious for having unfavourable employment conditions, ranging from long working hours, part time or seasonal employment and low-skill jobs. This study sought to find if men and women employed within the adventure tourism industry experienced these conditions based on their gender. The research adopted a quantitative methodology to enable statistical representation of findings. Data was collected by means of a self-completion survey which was published online and also handed out to adventure tourism employees in Gauteng. STATA-V13 was the statistical package used to analyse findings of the study. An Exploratory Factor Analysis and fisher’s exact tests were conducted. The EFA clustered 8 factors, namely; Intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors, labour relations, health and safety, employment relations, remuneration, physical equipment and basic conditions. The surprising finding was that adventure tourism employees in Gauteng did not experience varying employment conditions because of their gender. Owing to a paucity in literature, sources used for secondary data were extracted from the wider tourism and hospitality industry, while primary data was collected from adventure tourism employees.

Keywords

• gender
• woman empowerment
• adventure
• tourism
• employment conditions
• South Africa