ANTHROP 1AA3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Femininity
14 Sep 2016
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Sexism and Tourism
• Women in many countries are being drawn into unequal relationships with eachother as a result of
governments' sponsorship of the international tourist industry, some because they have no choice, but
others because they are making their own decisions about how to improve their lives
• Many women are playing active roles in expanding and shaping the tourist industry
o ie. Travel agents, flight attendants, chambermaids
• Tourism increases government revenues and modernizes influences however tourism's remarkable
growth may be narrowing or widening the gap between the affluent and the poor
Foot-Loose and Gendered:
• A women who travels away from the ideological protection of 'home' and without the protection of an
acceptable male escort is likely to be tarred with the brush of 'unrespectability'
• A women risks losing her honor or being blamed for any harm that befalls her on her travels
• By contrast a man is deemed less manly until he breaks away from home and strikes out on his own
• The most famous of the women who set out to travel further than convention allowed disguise are
referred to as the 'Vitorian lady travellers'. Most of them came from white middle classes of North
America and Europe. They set out upon travels that were supposed to be the preserve of men. They
defied the strictures of femininity by choosing parts of the world which whites considered "uncivilized"
or "uncharted".
• Many women travellers helped finance their travels by giving public lectures
Femininity in a World of Progress:
• The idea that the world is out there for the taking by ordinary citizens as well as adventurers emerged
alongside the growth of tourism as an industry
• World fairs were designed to be more tha popular entertainments; they were intended to help the public
imagine an industrializing, colonizing global enterprise
• At the hub of all world fairs was the idea of progress, global progress
Package Tours for the Respectable Woman
• Tourism is a package of ideas about industrial, bureaucratic life; it is a set of presumptions about
manhood, education and pleasure
• Tourism has depended on presumptions about masculinity and femininity
• Often women have been set up as the quintessence of the exotic; to many men, women are something to
be experienced
• If the women are of a different culture, the male tourist feels he has entered a region where he can shed
civilization's constraints, where he is freed from standards of behaviour imposed by respectable women
back home
The Tourism Formula for Development:
• Tourism creates a new kind of dependency for poor nations
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Most of them came from white middle classes of north. They set out upon travels that were supposed to be the preserve of men. They defied the strictures of femininity by choosing parts of the world which whites considered uncivilized or uncharted: many women travellers helped finance their travels by giving public lectures. If the women are of a different culture, the male tourist feels he has entered a region where he can shed civilization"s constraints, where he is freed from standards of behaviour imposed by respectable women back home.
