Beginner’s Guide to Gender-Mainstreaming for the Public Sector in Tourism

Tuesday November 26, 2024 | 08:30AM – 10:00AM (ET) / 14:30 - 16:00 (CET) |

Co-organized by

UN Tourism and UN Women are organizing and introductory online seminar for governments and public tourism bodies on how to implement a gender-mainstreaming across the policy and programme cycle.

The public sector in tourism has a responsibility to integrate gender equality and women's economic empowerment into its work, in line with commitments made by governments to the Sustainable Development Goals (specifically Goal 5 – gender equality and empower all women and girls), international women's rights treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), relevant ILO Conventions such as C183 – Maternity Protection Convention, 2000, and C190 – Violence and Harassment Convention and other national and regional policies and legislation.

Gender-mainstreaming is the globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality and is defined as: "The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated."

In the tourism sector, in practice few public strategies substantially integrate gender perspectives in their future planning. In addition, the experience of UN Tourism's flagship 'Centre Stage' capacity building programme for gender equality in tourism has revealed an urgent need to provide more tools and guidance on gender-mainstreaming for public sector actors in tourism.

UN Tourism and UN Women, together with the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, published in 2022 the Gender Mainstreaming Guidelines for the Public Sector in Tourismintended to boost gender-mainstreaming in tourism.

This online seminar is a continuation of this work and will contribute to an increased understanding and implementation of gender mainstreaming in the public sector in tourism. It will address important questions including:

What does gender-mainstreaming mean and why do we need it in tourism?
How can I implement gender-mainstreaming?
What support + resources are available for the public sector in tourism?

Objectives:

Increase awareness of gender-mainstreaming and its implementation by national tourism administrations and other public tourism bodies;
Facilitate national tourism administrations and other public tourism bodies work in reducing gender-inequalities in a systematic fashion.
Share main lessons learned in designing gender-transformative interventions in tourism, focusing on the specificities of the sector and the different challenges this can pose;
Share practices and tools that can help to ensure tourism policies and public programmes are designed to respond to the specific needs of women, girls, men and boys.