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G20 Summits • 2019 Osaka Summit
G20 Tourism Ministerial Meetings

Annex 1: Actions for Women's Empowerment in the Field of Tourism

G20 Tourism Ministers' Meeting
Kutchan, Hokkaido, Japan, 26 October 2019
[pdf]

See Declaration: Advancing Tourism's Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
See Annex 2: Actions for Strengthening the Resiliency of Tourism

The Osaka Leaders' Declaration states the following about women's empowerment.

• Gender equality and women's empowerment are essential for achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth.
• G20 Leaders will exchange their respective progress and actions taken in the G20 towards the Brisbane Goal on the basis of the annual report.
• G20 Leaders commit to take further action to reduce gender pay gaps, end all forms of discrimination against women and combat stereotypes and promote women's access to managerial and decision-making positions.
• G20 Leaders commit to continue their support for women's education and access to digital technology in order to close the digital gender gap.
• G20 Leaders will address the gender gap in unpaid care work, which remains a major obstacle to women's participation in the labour market.
• G20 Leaders reaffirm the importance of taking measures to eradicate all gender-based violence, abuse and harassment.
• G20 leaders reaffirm the importance of taking measures to support skills development and provide access to funding to promote women's entrepreneurship.

Tourism continues to be an important driver of global economic growth and, as such, it is mentioned in the G20 Leaders' Declaration as a sector that can contribute to the creation of quality jobs and entrepreneurship, especially for women and youth.

As a sector with more female employment, business start-ups and higher economic growth compared to many other sectors, tourism can greatly contribute to the progress of the Brisbane Goal (to reduce the gender labor force participation gap by 25% by 2025) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goal 5: "achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls". However, women working in the tourism sector remain concentrated in low-level jobs, have limited representation amongst management and senior positions and experience many other issues such as wage disparities between themselves and men (UNWTO, UN Women, GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Government, World Bank & Amadeus* 2019).

We welcome recommendations and work on women's empowerment through tourism by the UNWTO and WTTC, as well as women's empowerment recommendations by the OECD, UN Women, World Bank and other organizations.

This annex has been formulated in line with these important recommendations and we will work respectively and continue to share our knowledge, action and progress.

1. Employment
• Implement strategies for promoting decent work and strengthen legal protection for women across all areas of the tourism sector, including taking measures to eradicate all gender-based violence, abuse and harassment;
• Improve minimum wage regulations, equal pay laws, parental leave, flexible working hours, work-from-home options, childcare, and the prevention of sexual harassment (UNWTO et al. 2019*);
• Improve women's access to quality jobs and ensure equal access to opportunities between men and women (WTTC 2019**);
• Work to correct gender workplace segregation. (OECD 2019***);
• Improving availability of timely and comparable data concerning gender disparities in the labor market. (OECD 2019);
• Promote a general environment of zero tolerance of violence and harassment, including gender-based violence (ILO 2017****);
• Apply the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value in law and practice, paying particular attention to specific challenges affecting the industry, namely, gender stereotypes, occupational segregation, sex-biased job classification systems and the gender pay gap (ILO 2017);
• Address occupational segregation and the gender wage gap by paying special attention to career development for women (ILO 2017).
2. Entrepreneurship
• Reduce barriers to businesses for women and facilitate women's financial inclusion; and
• Expand women's market access and promote fair trade for their tourism products and services (UNWTO et al. 2019);
• Promote entrepreneurship especially for young women by inter alia improving access to finance and financial education for the creation of sustainable tourism enterprises led by women (ILO 2017).
3. Education
• Develop skills and leadership training for women in tourism and promote gender equality training programmes for tourism representatives in the public and private sectors. (UNWTO et al. 2019);
• Anticipate the improvement of women's education levels in the Young Career Initiative (YCI), an initiative by the hotel industry aimed at youth unemployment (WTTC 2019);
• Promote return-to-work programmes, including the introduction of 'returnships'. (WTTC 2019);
• Promote provision and access to quality apprenticeships targeting women (ILO 2017).
4. Leadership
• Improve the gender balance in representation across tourism policy and administrations;
• Facilitate women's full participation and access to leadership positions in all levels of decision-making inadministration, tourism companies and communities;
• Establish and develop training programmes for career progression aimed at women (UNWTO et al. 2019);
• Promote policies and efforts by private companies to foster women's promotion to management (WTTC 2019).
5. Community
• Support women's tourism networks, NGOs, and tourism cooperatives;
• Facilitate women's voices in community and household decision-making in tourism communities;
6. Measurement for better policies
• Strengthen national capacity to collect, use and report on tourism data that is disaggregated by sex, age occupation and employment status and other factors in a strategic manner (UNWTO et al. 2019);
• Support research to understand how tourism affects gender equality and women's empowerment in different contexts (UNWTO et al. 2019).

* The Global Report on Women in Tourism, Second Edition (2019) will be published in the Autumn of 2019 by UNWTO in collaboration with UN Women, GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Government, the World Bank and Amadeus.

**WTTC (2019), Travel & Tourism: Driving Women's Success, March 2019

***OECD (2019), Women at Work in G20 countries: Progress and policy action.

****ILO (2017) Guidelines on decent work and socially responsible tourism

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Source: Japan Tourism Agency