Tourism is based on the patriarchal division of labor between women and men in which it is defined which role is assigned to women and which to men, what role women and men take on in the practice of everyday life.
Women are reduced to their "traditional" roles, while at the same time new economic prospects and career opportunities are promised to them
The tourism journalist J. Seydoux thus writes: "In contrast to other, more masculine economic activities, tourism is by definition closer to feminine nature. Motherly care, female hospitality, a nice welcoming smile..."
The context is the image of woman as an ideological product of Western, bourgeois society of the 19th century - woman in the function of subserviant domesticity reserving the modern sectors suited for a career for the men and paving the way for him to be the only wage-earner. The care for the household and for internal family matters became woman's work, while family economies were largely excluded from this bourgeois ideal. In the economic/social context certain domestic services like washing, cleaning, feeding etc. were outsourced and in turn offered to women for possible waged work in the service sector. The 'maid' was the most common women's profession in Switzerland in the 19th century. The work that is being done for free as a matter of course in the household sphere is being paid at correspondingly low wages in the outside sphere.
This sheds some light on the conception of work, on what, in the serice sector, is considered work, and is paid.
As tourism as a globally active service sector offers itself today especially to women, this is happening at the global level with recourse to traditional Western ideological patterns.
The history of tourism has always been imagined in the masculine - the search, in a "feminine care" (that has to be as cheap as possible), for recovery for those suffering from stress in the industrialized countries.
"Without the imagination of masculinity and femininity (...) in the countries of origin as well as in the destination countries it would be impossible to keep the tourism industry and its political significance going in this form." (Cynthia Enloe)
Excerpts from the introduction to:
"Herrliche Aussichten" (play on the words "Fantastic Views" and "Manly Prospects")
by Christine Plüss
Ursula for Radio LoRa, Zurich, Switzerland
Thanks to Nicole, Dani and Christoph