Can Tourism Development Reduce Gender Inequality?

Abstract

This study evaluates the nonlinear relationship between gender inequality and tourism receipts using a standard quantile regression approach and advances the results with an asymmetric application. Gender inequality is a pervasive and complex phenomenon rooted in the socio-economic culture of many countries. The reasons for inequality have country-specific situations, and to gain a broader understanding, countries were grouped by their income levels to explore the relationships for different groups. The study concludes that not all countries stimulate overall gender inequality through tourism. The study results show that in all but the 10th quantile, tourism had a negative and significant relationship with gender inequality providing support for the notion that tourism helps narrow the gender gap. The exceptions were found only at the 10th quantile indicates that low-income countries with low levels of tourism development could not derive the benefits of tourism’s potential in reducing gender inequality.