Agency, structures and women managers' views of their careers in tourism

Too many barriers to overcome? Career challenges of women in the UK hospitality industry

Women face numerous challenges in building a successful career. The hospitality industry exemplifies workplaces where women find progressing careers to senior management very challenging. This paper explores barriers to women's career progression in the hospitality industry in the United Kingdom (UK). The study analyses the views of women in management positions in the UK hospitality industry on challenges they face in career progression. The findings indicate that women face numerous barriers in their career paths, and these include gender bias, microaggressions, work‐life balance issues, lack of gender diversity, inflexibility, and mentoring.

The subjective career success of women: The role of personal resources

Introduction

Research on women’s career success has been the subject of extensive investigations, emphasizing the barriers they encounter in their careers. However, far less attention has been given to the personal resources that promote women’s career success. The purpose of our study was to provide more conclusive evidence regarding the role that personal resources such as resilience and grit can play in the relationship between women’s person-environment fit and the perceptions of their career success. Underpinned by the Job Demands Resources and social cognitive theory, our study aims to investigate whether resilience and grit could either explain how person-environment fit translates into feelings of subjective career success or could strengthen this relationship.

Method

A cross-sectional online survey research design was used, and a convenience sample of 408 female employees was obtained. Relationships were explored through structural equation modelling.

Results

When controlling for age, the findings of this study revealed significantly positive relationships between the constructs, with person-environment fit, resilience, and grit, explaining a large portion of the variance in subjective career success. Although our data supported the mediating role of grit and resilience in the person-environment fit and subjective career success relationship, the moderating effects of grit and resilience could not be established.

Discussion

These findings illustrate both grit and resilience as mechanisms that indirectly affect the person-environment fit and subjective career success relationship of women. However, our findings indicate that resilience and grit cannot be considered mechanisms that would buffer against poor person-environment fit’s effect on their career success perceptions. Firstly, our study advances our understanding of the roles personal resources such as resilience and grit play in women’s career success as ways to overcome obstacles and workplace barriers. Secondly, using the motivational process of the Job Demands Resources Framework as theoretical background, we contribute by shedding light on how personal resources (resilience and grit) can be considered underlying factors influencing the person-environment fit and career success relationship for women. If women experience good person-environment fit, there is a greater opportunity for developing resilience and grit and, consequently, subjective career success.

Why Is the Spanish Hotel Trade Lagging So Far Behind in Gender Equality? A Sustainability Question

There are far more women than men who hold higher qualifications in tourism, but nevertheless, inequalities still prevail on executive committees in the tourism industry. Society nowadays is aware that gender inequality in terms of women’s rights and opportunities has always existed. Such problems are reflected in religious doctrines, cultural habits, and outdated ways of thinking in which women are viewed as being first and foremost careers. This attitude is also reflected in the workplace. Methodology: Hakim’s (1992) methodology has been used to classify occupations, and female-dominated, male-dominated and integrated occupations can be used, studying data published by the most important hotel chains in Spain. Objectives: since women joined the labor market, females have been employed in significant numbers in the tourism sector. The objective of this work is to study in depth what number of women are in the boardrooms of large hotel chains in Spain, collecting data from the top five hotel chains, as this important phenomenon must be researched. The most salient results are: a high number of women work in the hotels subsector and gender equality has not yet been achieved at higher echelons, since senior management positions are dominated by males. Hence, the aim of this paper is, having carried out a thorough and extensive evaluation, to empirically determine the state of play for females in this industry today and to put forward further improvements which women, the government, hotels and society should jointly strive to achieve. In the conclusion, the initial hypothesis is confirmed.