- In this sector the limits between regulated and deregulated, formal and informal activities are blurred.

- Tourism is being subsidized. The interesting point here is how traditionally "female" skills and activities are being turned into waged labor or are otherwise subordinated to the (international) tourism industry.

- Much like in domestic work, personal services are aimed at satisfying needs (in this case the needs of tourists). They are fundamentally different from services aimed at the production or marketing of goods.

- Travel destinations are not only places inhabited by people but also places in which certain human relations or patterns of relations between genders are offered or produced.

The tourism industry is a sector of the economy in which a great number of women are employed for a salary. According to the OECD the percentage of women within the tourism sector is as follows:

Greece 37% - Netherlands 52% - Turkey 63%  - Spain 46% - Portugal 53% - Denmark 70% - France 49% - Australia 58% - Sweden 75% - Switzerland 50% - Austria 60%

The gross annual income for full-time workers in the trade, gastronomy and reparation sector consists of:

Women with a foreign passport Fr. 41400.00

For comparison, here is the gross income in the banks and insurance sector for:

Swiss women Fr. 56189.00

(Figures for the years 94/95, because the tourism sector does not provide specific statistics on a regular basis)

Compared with the entire economy the Swiss gastronomy sector employs a higher percentage of women. Mostly these are Swiss women in highly qualified jobs. The proportion of Swiss women in a cadre or director position is a multiple of the national average.

Precisely in this sector the level of wages is generally low.

One could learn much from a study of how, in tourism, the formal meets the informal economy and how waged and unwaged labor are interlinked.

How is unwaged labor, done mostly by women, appropriated by the formal sector?

What consequence does it have if a higher-than-average proportion of women can be found in such a badly paid sector of the economy?

In tourism - propagated world-wide with the argument of "an income and jobs for women"?

In tourism - that cannot be rationalized away, but is badly paid.

Could it be that the much-hailed resistence to crisis is based precisely on how fortunes, skills and labor done mostly by women who are badly paid is being profitably integrated in the tourism sector?

For example: Women's jobs on golf courses

In golf, on the one hand unpaid natural environment becomes part of the tourism offering, and on the other, women are integrated into the tourism product.

The following items contribute to the specific attractivity of golf courses:

- an overwhelming view to afar

Psalms are sung to the beauty of "undisturbed nature", to paradise, the "garden Eden". Golf is not only about serious sports and performance, but also about pleasure and fun.

What enters into the price however is the number of golf holes and the duration of the game.

Besides the "wild" and "beautiful" nature, the sportsmen and hedonists can be offered young and beautiful women as carriers of their golf equipment (caddies). This unhealthy job is paid miserably.

With respect to the charge-carrying young women the gulf player can really feel as a superior man.

He can consume female "love" services much more discretely, cheaply and more spontaneously than in the sex business.

The golf player can stage in his free time what he practices continuously in his working time - his economic, rational and performance-oriented existence starts making sense only because there is an extra-economic reality. Golf courses would be monotonous if it were not for the "wild" nature and women.

Golf courses in dream-like settings can be produced only in limited numbers. The more golf players pour into this recreation of the world elite, the more the courses lose their character of paradise.

Woman, considered as "undisturbed nature", so to say, is a part of the flat-rate agreement. What would vacations in the Carribean be if it were not for the woman with the exotic drink in the advertizing!

What is the consequence of images of "femininity", qualities attributed to women, the body and labor power of women is being marketed and becomes an inseparable part of the tourism product?

Eventually the competitiveness of tourism enterprises depends on the "all-included performance" of their employees.

For example: Tourist guides

They need to bring along not only management skills but also all sorts of emotional work - from the therapeutical discussion to the erotic flirt. They are to work irregular hours and be flexible almost beyond limits to adapt to the demand. Their "feminine attractivity", their social competence and their personal emotional work is all included in their work as a tourist guide.

The job profile of a tourist guide is simillar to that of managers who are extremely well paid for their work.

The large gap in wages between a tourist guide and a manager cannot be explained exclusively by the fact that in tourism it is mostly women who provide these services, but by the fact that the emotional competence of the manager is oriented towards the organizing of production and service processes within the "world economy", while the social competence of the tourist guide - though it is appropriated by the tourism company and sold - serves directly to cater to the needs of the tourist (just like domestic work serves directly to cater to the needs of people).

If the personal services of the recreation industry were to be duly remunerated, the touristic possibilities that represent an important aspect of the standard of living of the tourists would in many cases be substantially limited.

The aggressivity with which the wages of the people working in the travel sector (e.g., in the flight industry) are pushed down goes hand in hand with the aggressivity with which (still) available resources are made use of - beautiful landscapes, ground water, "exotic cultures" not yet readily accessible, or forms of emotional work.

This process of subordinating the production conditions, work and competence to the profit interests of the tourism industry can be considered a broadening of capitalist money economy to new sectors.

In such processes of broadening money economy there must be economic or other pressure so that people sell their land and become active in tourism.

The tourism sector is one of the attractive speculative investment projects with associated real-estate speculation and/or money laundering. Also, the tourism development programs in regions struck by economic crisis play an important role

The massive development of mega-projects that in South-East Asia are called "golf-cum-casino resorts" and take up hundreds of hectars of often fertile land hint at the fact that the revenues from land speculation and corruption and money laundering will have a much greater weight in the future casinos than all revenues from the running of the installation that are to be expected only in the distant future.

The ruthless expansion accelerates the process of cutting back traditional activities based rather on subsistence in the countryside enterprises.

The conditions necessary to economic and other pressure to force people to sell their land and seek employment in tourism are also prepared by tourism development projects. They pave the way for creating such pressure by wasting resources.
 

Compiled from:

"Der Duft der Blumen am Rande des Weges" (The fragrence of flowers besides the path)