Viewpoint: Gender balance needs to go all the way to the top

Though things are moving in the right direction, we need to work faster and harder to achieve gender parity, says Alessandra Alonso

A recent report supported by the World Travel and Tourism Council, looking at gender imbalances in the leisure industry (comprising publicly-listed hotel groups, casinos and entertainment companies) has revealed a major diversity disparity. While the gender balance of the overall workforce stands at 50:50, only 7% of most senior level positions are held by women.

The glass ceiling is still very real, and the higher up the ladder we go, the more we see the number of women represented falling. In mid-level management, the percentage of women apparently drops to 42% and to 33% at senior management. At C-Suite level, only one in five executives are women, going down to just 7% at the very top.

After 20 years of campaigning for and working towards gender equality in hospitality and the wider travel and tourism industry, this is no surprise to me. Women in Travel CIC, the social enterprise I founded six years ago, was conceived with the purpose of getting more women – often marginalised, vulnerable or under-represented women – into jobs in travel and hospitality.

The good news is that progress is being made. The report shows that the percentage of women on the boards of leisure businesses has grown from 17% in 2007 to 28% in 2022. Things are clearly moving in the right direction, but not quickly enough, and we shouldn’t be satisfied until we have equity and diversity, in all its forms, reflected in our offices, our establishments and our boardrooms.

Not only is it clearly the right thing to do, but it also makes commercial sense. Globally, women make 80%-85% of the decisions when booking travel and female solo travel is one of the fastest-growing market segments. We need more female decision-makers and figureheads that can better understand and empathise with our core audience, to influence and grow the market.

So how do we affect change? There is clearly a barrier at mid-level management. We are losing a disproportionate amount of female talent somewhere in the middle, often due to maternity leave and the ongoing imbalance of care responsibilities, for elderly relatives as well as children. The UK government’s recent announcement is certainly welcome as it will enable more women to return to the workforce, but it is still only scratching the surface. For women in work, Women in Travel’s Mentoring Circles, IWTTF platform and Male Allyship Programme can offer much-needed support and guidance. Across these platforms, we are giving a voice to women and their experiences – educating the wider industry on the rationale and the tools to affect change – and giving women the belief, support and environment that will navigate challenges and encourage them to progress.

I think we still have a perception issue too. We need to make hospitality more appealing to all people, highlighting that opportunities to progress to senior roles are very real and make hospitality an aspirational career choice. We see this first hand with our employability programmes, where our pool of talent goes from discounting hospitality as a career to being excited the moment they set foot in a hotel and talk to staff.

Companies also need to be more accountable for demonstrating their progress on gender diversity at all levels. And they need to think outside the box in terms of diverse recruitment – we all know how hard it has been to staff our restaurants and hotels since the pandemic.

This is something that Women in Travel CIC can help with, by providing access to a pool of skilled individuals from a diverse background who are eager to work in roles in hospitality. We give women the training, mentoring and confidence to be work-ready, and match them with employers, who also receive our support in fostering an environment in which those women will thrive. Despite lack of industry experience, we find those women regularly outperform their peers in terms of attitude and application, absorbing their training with vigour and enthusiasm. It is amazing to see these tangible, inspiring and often life-changing results first-hand.

Gender parity – and diversity in its wider context – is something we all need to take responsibility for. Empowered women foster thriving communities, and we need to see more women at the helm of our businesses. I encourage everyone to look at what they can do to uplift and celebrate the woman next to them and see the great results we can achieve together.

Alessandra Alonso is the managing director and founder of Women in Travel CIC