Increasing female employment plays a role in reducing poverty, sustaining economic growth, and supporting women’s empowerment and independence. Some of the key highlights include:

• Travel & Tourism has almost twice as many female employers than other sectors. The sector provides women with more opportunities for workforce participation, leadership, entrepreneurship and empowerment than many other sectors, particularly in developing countries.
• The female share in Travel & Tourism’s employment is greater than that of the overall economy in eleven of the nineteen G20 countries in this study. Across the G20, women account on average for 46.4% of Travel Tourism’s employment compared with 43.3% employment in the economy as a whole.
  • Russia ranks first for the female share of T&T employment, followed by South Africa and South Korea
  • Women’s share of Travel & Tourism employment among the G20 is lowest in Turkey, India and Saudi Arabia
  • In the USA and China, the two largest Travel & Tourism economies, the female share of employment in the sector is broadly in line with the share of female employment in their overall economies.
• Women’s share of Travel & Tourism’s employment has grown the most in emerging economies over the last ten years, demonstrating the sector’s potential as a tool for empowerment in these countries.
• Policies best aimed at increasing women’s employment generally, and in Travel & Tourism, are those that help ensure women have access to skills and talent development to enter the labour force and that sufficiently address inequalities in the workplace.