1. Introduction
Gender equality is one of the key evaluation indicators of global and regional sustainable development [
1]. As an important global economic sector, tourism’s association with gender issues has always been a focus of the scientific community [
2,
3,
4]. The evidence of the positive impact of tourism on gender equality has been provided in numerous micro cases [
5,
6,
7,
8,
9]. These studies focus on the impact of tourism on the empowerment of women’s economy, employment, and education. The results show that tourism plays an important role in promoting women’s status and thus narrows the gender gap. It was also reported that, relative to the broader economy, tourism employs more women (54% versus 39%); women in tourism earn 14.7% less than men, and this figure is 16.8% in the general economy; and 23.7% of tourism ministers are women, but only 20.7% of the general government ones (World Bank Open Data, available at:
https://data.worldbank.org (accessed on 21 September 2019)). Therefore, the role of tourism in promoting gender equality has again captured more academic attention since the United Nations included gender equality in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 [
10]. However, we note that these studies basically rely on sociological methodologies. This dominant paradigm of sociology makes it difficult to quantify the effect of tourism on gender equality.
The fieldwork methods from the sociological perspective dominate this subfield. Few macro studies have been conducted at the national or international level. In addition, case studies are often difficult to replicate in other regions, which makes it difficult to identify common features of the nexus of tourism and gender equality. Notably, the effect of tourism on gender equality is not always positive. As argued by Lenao and Basupi and Nguyen, the marginalization of women is equally noteworthy in tourism [
7,
11]. Therefore, we need a new tool for quantifying the relationship between tourism and gender equality. However, current sociological methods seem impossible to tell us the answer to this quantification. Given this background, we adopt a novel econometric method to investigate the relationship between tourism and gender equality. Moreover, given the significant effect of the economy, employment, and education on gender equality (see
Section 2), we simultaneously concern these three variables. Consequently, this study explores the relationship among tourism, economy, employment, education, and gender equality.
In contrary to prior empirical studies, our article contributes to the literature in three ways. First and foremost, we do our research from an economic perspective rather than a traditional sociological one. The fixed sociological characteristics have made this classic and important tourism field less innovative [
1,
2]. We expect the new perspective to lead to new findings and inspire more novel research. Second, our data is derived from official statistics or reports rather than from the traditional primary survey. This study depends on the panel data of five variables: tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality. The advantage of doing so is that our research framework can be replicated, thus free from the subjectivity and uncertainty of case studies. In addition, macro research based on panel data helps find common conclusions in different regions.
Third, methodologically, we employ the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) approach to explain the impact of tourism shock on gender equality. Since Sims introduced the VAR model into economic analysis [
12], the VAR model has been one of the most popular methods for analyzing multiple related variables. Generally speaking, if there are fewer economic variables in the VAR model, satisfactory parameters can be obtained through the ordinary least square (OLS) or maximum likelihood estimation method. However, if there are more variables (such as the five variables involved in our study), the panel fixed effect will make the results from the VAR model inconsistent and bias due to more parameter estimation. In this context, we build an advanced augmented PVAR model to improve the model’s robustness. Concretely, we employ Arellano–Bond’s generalized method of moment (GMM) estimator to estimate the PVAR model. The GMM estimation method defines the criterion function as the correlation function of the instrumental variable and disturbance term and minimizes it to obtain a robust parameter estimation [
13].
We organize this paper as follows.
Section 2 presents a literature review. In
Section 3, we introduce the methodology and data collection.
Section 4 reports the empirical results, including cointegration tests, impulse response functions, and short and long-run Granger causality tests.
Section 5 discusses the results and underlines the policy implications. The final section concludes.
2. Literature Review
The 20th century saw profound changes in traditional notions of gender. In the new century, gender equality in particular has become a global trend and is even considered politically correct in most major countries around the world [
14]. Moreover, gender equality is listed among both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and SDGs. Nevertheless, deep-rooted patriarchal culture and different levels of social and economic development make gender equality vary greatly in different regions [
15,
16]. There are still some key factors significantly affecting the realization of gender equality, including work, income and rights [
17], education, employment, and political participation [
18], income [
19,
20], education [
21], and various material and social resources, such as income, rights, and employment [
22]. Likewise,
The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 introduced by the World Economic Forum summarized these factors as
economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment [
23]. Therefore, the economy, education, employment, and political rights could largely explain the gender gap.
Once the idea of sustainable development was put forward, it was closely related to tourism. Nowadays, that tourism should and could contribute to global and regional sustainable development is a fundamental consensus. Consequently, tourism is duty-bound to promote gender equality. Conversely, without gender equality, there is no sustainable tourism as well [
24,
25]. Therefore, as mentioned above, extensive published literature focusing on tourism and gender equality has constituted a hot spot in sociology. Wilkinson and Pratiwi early indicated that increased income is the biggest change for women in rural tourism development [
26]. Afterward, economic empowerment has always been the major concern of scholars in the field of tourism and gender equality [
8,
24,
27,
28]. Along with women’s economic empowerment, much attention has been paid to the increase in women’s employment opportunities since the increase in women’s tourism income is usually achieved through employment. Nyaruwata and Nyaruwata and Uduji et al. argued that tourism is the main industry for women’s employment [
9,
29]. Similarly, Gentry and Rinaldi and Salerno concluded that tourism is an important contributor to helping women create new jobs [
30,
31]. This is also well reflected in the
Global Report on Women in Tourism that finds that women account for the majority of tourism employment worldwide and tourism provides a smaller gender pay gap than the broader economy [
32] (pp. 8–9).
Few studies have focused on education and gender equality in tourism. However, education for women is vital for their empowerment and requires sustaining institutional and budgetary support [
21]. On the one hand, UNWTO indicated that a lack of education or formal training could jeopardize women’s active participation in tourism [
32] (pp. 13). On the other hand, tourism needs more female employees with high service skills and knowledge levels. Therefore, more opportunities for education in tourism are provided for women and make them more independent [
33]. Furthermore, a large number of female senior managers and even leaders exist in tourism [
34,
35].
It is thus rationally concluded that to a large extent, tourism promotes gender equality through empowering women’s economy, education, and employment. We also notice that
The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 pointed out the importance of political participation in gender equality [
23]. This, however, has not captured enough attention in tourism studies. It may be difficult to explore women’s political empowerment from the perspective of tourism. Nevertheless, the proportion of female officials in tourism administrations is higher than that in the whole government [
32] (pp. 65–66), which partly shows that tourism can realize the political empowerment of women as well.
Although previous studies have shown that tourism promotes gender equality, the obstacles to this process are still diverse and gender discrimination is still widespread [
36]. For example, Harvey et al. early found the inequality between the benefits of women and men [
37]. Oliver and Sard found that gender discrimination may be the main reason for the gender wage gap in the hospitality sector [
38]. Alrwajfah et al. indicated that obstacles still exist in women’s employment in the Jordanian tourism sector, leading them to be less optimistic about the development of the tourism economy [
39]. Similarly, in Islamic society, conservative social traditions and customs significantly affect women’s current and future employment in tourism [
40,
41]. This reveals that traditional gender culture weakens the positive effect of tourism on women’s economy, employment, and education, which is also substantiated [
42]. Moreover, gender discrimination against women persists even among top-level managers [
4,
34].
To sum up, gender equality seems to be an important outcome of tourism. In the development of tourism, the rise of women’s status has been widely acknowledged. However, sexism still exists significantly in tourism. It should be noted that these conclusions are mainly based on micro case studies. However, prior studies have failed to investigate the nexus of tourism and gender equality from large macro-scales such as national and even international. The primary reason for this gap is that previous studies on tourism and gender equality have been fixed in the paradigm of sociology [
2,
3]. The fieldwork approach dominates this subfield and is challenging to use in macro research at the national or international level. Additionally, case studies are difficult to replicate in other regions, thus making it difficult to find common problems of tourism and gender equality. Given this background, some scholars quantified the influence of tourism on gender equality [
1,
11] and explored the configuration of tourism’s influence on the gender gap [
43] at the national level, thus expanding the research scope of such an important field of tourism and gender. However, the dynamic relationship between tourism and gender equality and related variables remains unknown. Therefore, unlike prior research, we attempt to explore the equilibrium and causal relationship between tourism and gender equality at also the national level by applying economic techniques.
As was mentioned in the introduction, the research method is the GMM-PVAR model, in which tourism and gender equality are regarded as two economic variables. We simultaneously introduce the economy, education, and employment into the GMM-PVAR model based on the above literature review. However, we do not take into account political rights and cultural variables due to limited data availability.
5. Discussion
Our results clearly demonstrate a long-run equilibrium relationship amongst tourism, economy, employment, education, and gender equality for both the whole sample and three subsamples. Although both tourism and gender equality series are not stationary, their linear combination becomes stationary. This further suggests that in the long run, tourism and gender equality possess a common drift. Gender equality may be deviated from equilibrium by some random disturbance in the short term; however, this deviation will return to equilibrium over time through the channels of tourism and the other three variables. This new finding confirms the long-run intrinsic relationship between tourism and gender equality, which provides a theoretical basis for achieving gender equality through developing tourism.
Our results also demonstrate that tourism contributes to realizing gender equality. This conclusion is consistent with the studies of Zhang and Zhang [
1], Ferguson [
5], Gil Arroyo et al. [
6], and Nguyen [
11]; however, we found something new. For example, the impulse response results show that the impact of tourism on gender equality shifts between positive and negative in different periods and will reach a steady state in the long run. Overall, tourism is the Granger cause for gender equality for both the whole Asian sample and three subsamples. This implies that developing tourism could narrow the gender gap. As indicated in extensive case studies, tourism positively affects gender equality through the economy, employment, and education. Our research confirms the role of tourism in promoting these three factors.
Tourism involves a wide variety of positions that have different entry requirements. In general, the entry threshold for tourism employment is relatively low, which is conducive to attracting a large number of female laborers who are less competitive than men. In other words, the employment opportunities for women in tourism are greater than those in the broader economy. Therefore, tourism provides more jobs for women and in turn increases their income and enhances their status in families and society. Similarly, as argued by Moswete and Lacey [
33], tourism also provides more opportunities for women’s education. This is more about vocational skills than schooling, which makes women more versatile in tourism services. All in all, with the development of tourism, the economy, employment, and education opportunities for women have increased. In this context, traditional dominant patriarchal gender discourse and practices are gradually being challenged.
According to the impulse response results, it seems difficult to judge the direction of the impact of the economy, education, and employment on gender equality as the impulse response curve fluctuates significantly. By contrast, the results for Granger causality tests clearly show that these three variables significantly contribute to the realization of gender equality in the long run but have opposite results in the short run. The same is valid for tourism. In the short run, tourism cannot lead to gender equality either. Hence, developing tourism, economy and education as well as increasing women’s employment cannot lead to the short-run improvement of women’s status.
We also found heterogeneous impulse response functions and Granger causalities between tourism and gender equality across the regions. In East and Southeast Asia, the results indicate that the impact of a positive shock to tourism on gender equality fluctuates the most. The Granger causalities also indicate that tourism causes gender equality at the least significance level in the long run. That is, compared with other regions, tourism has the weakest positive effect on gender equality in East and Southeast Asia. On the contrary, tourism in South Asia leads most to gender equality. In West and Central Asia, tourism basically shows a positive impact on gender equality.
Surprisingly, the economy does not contribute to gender equality in East and Southeast Asia and West and Central Asia. East and Southeast Asia are the world’s leading tourist destinations, with China, Japan, and Thailand, which makes great achievements in inbound tourism. Additionally, the major developed countries in Asia are concentrated in this region, such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. However, according to The Global Gender Gap Report, these countries with higher economic achievements score lower on the gender equality index. In contrast, the Philippines has long ranked first in Asia and the top 10 in the world in terms of the gender equality index. As a result, the economy does not explain the gender gap in East and Southeast Asia. At this point, the culture may be more persuasive.
It is well known that the Confucian culture and Islamic culture dominate East and Southeast Asia. In this cultural atmosphere, the idea of men being superior to women is deeply rooted. Even in highly developed countries such as Japan, the status of women remains low, resulting in that Japan’s gender equality has long ranked outside the top 100 worldwide. The same is true in West and Central Asia, where popular Islamic culture makes it difficult to distribute economic development achievements to women, thus leading to a lower index of gender equality. Exceptionally, we find a high index of gender equality in the Philippines, which may be related to its more popular Christian culture. This finding is actually not new and is similar to the studies of Alrwajfah et al. [
39] and Uduji et al. [
40], who found that conservative social traditions and customs hinder the narrowing of the gender gap. This further confirms the findings of Kabeer [
15], who concluded that the impact of economic growth on gender equality is regionally heterogeneous.
We noticed that compared to the economy, tourism contributes more to gender equality. This implies that the effect of tourism on gender equality is reflected in not only the material resources such as the economy and employment but also the social resources such as culture to a large extent. Tourism differs greatly from the other economic industries in that tourism does not produce “cold” and “inanimate” consumer goods but provides “warm” and “living” services face to face. Furthermore, tourism activities are mainly characterized by person-to-person communication. This determines the significant cultural exchange characteristics of the production and consumption of tourism products. Furthermore, tourism in this study is measured as the number of inbound tourist arrivals. The interaction of the extremely different cultures between tourism destinations and tourist sources is significantly conducive to promoting women’s status. Given this background, tourism is more powerful than any other economic tool for promoting gender equality. Therefore, developing tourism, especially inbound tourism, plays a vital role in achieving gender equality in destinations.
Based on these findings and the discussion above, we underline some important policy implications on tourism and gender equality. First, in Asia, we should increase support for developing tourism, especially inbound tourism, and vigorously strengthen marketing for tourist source markets with high gender equality index (mainly referring to European and North American markets), thereby changing the traditional gender perceptions through the cultural function of tourism. Second, in tourism, investment in women’s service skills, training, and education should be increased to guarantee women’s access to finance, markets, technology, and information. In this way, women can be retained and given more opportunities for promotion and decision-making. Third, we should balance the wages of men and women and implement the rules and regulations of equal pay for equal work in tourism, thus propagandizing and establishing the corporate culture of gender equality. Fourth, we should provide an environment conducive to women’s employment and entrepreneurship in tourism, which includes laws, policies, and welfare, so that women can be gradually freed from the constraints of their families and conservative patriarchal culture.
6. Concluding Remarks
This study investigates the endogenous relationships among tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality by using the GMM-PVAR technique based on panel data from 36 Asian countries over the period 2006–2019. The results show the long-run equilibrium relationship among tourism, gender equality, economy, education, and employment. Furthermore, developing tourism is conducive to narrowing the gender gap, which however differs significantly across different Asian regions. The positive impact of tourism on the economy, education, and employment also varies significantly across East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West and Central Asia. All the economy, education, and employment mostly contribute to realizing gender equality, but such a contribution is not decisive. Tourism promotes gender equality more than the economy, education, and employment. Relative to the economic function, the cultural role of tourism is more beneficial to the realization of gender equality to some extent.
This article provides new economics insights into the subfield of tourism and gender equality and contributes significantly to addressing the research gap focusing only on sociological ones indicated by Figueroa-Domecq et al. [
2]. Furthermore, we provide a novel econometric analytical framework to explore the cointegration, dynamic, and causal relationships between tourism and gender equality, which can be applied to various regions beyond Asian countries. In conclusion, the study assigns an interdisciplinary character to the field of tourism and gender equality.
Despite the robust results obtained using the GMM-PVAR approach, one limitation of this study lies in that our conclusions may not be applicable in individual regions due to the special socio-economic characteristics of a particular country. Future studies could explore the relationship between the five analyzed variables based on national time series data. Besides, as explained in the article, the culture variable may play an important role in gender equality, which however is not explored in the current study due to limitations in data availability. Thus, quantifying the impact of culture on the relationship between tourism and gender equality appears to be also interesting and important in the future. Finally, gender equality in this study in nature is a comprehensive indicator and has many components; however, we do not explore the effect of tourism on each component. Future studies thus could be conducted by extending the proxies for gender equality by introducing more segmented indicators, thereby leading to a more in-depth understanding of the impact of tourism on gender equality.