Empowering Women in Gambian Tourism: Addressing Gaps and Building Resilience

The World Bank's assessment reveals significant gender gaps in The Gambia’s tourism sector, where women face employment, leadership, and entrepreneurial barriers compounded by societal stigma. The report calls for legal protections, skill-building, and market access to foster a more inclusive and resilient tourism industry.

The World Bank’s Gender Assessment of the Gambian Tourism Sector, a comprehensive study by World Bank researchers and external collaborators, examines critical gender gaps in the tourism industry and their effects on women’s participation, income, and advancement opportunities. Tourism offers unique opportunities for women globally, often providing flexible work schedules and relatively low barriers to entry in terms of skills and capital. In The Gambia, tourism represents a significant potential for female employment and entrepreneurship, but it also presents substantial challenges, particularly in the context of exploitation risks and limited formal protections for women. According to the United Nations Global Report on Women and Tourism, women are twice as likely to be employers in tourism than in other sectors, drawn to the industry due to its flexible work arrangements and low entry costs. However, despite their strong presence in tourism education and informal roles, women continue to face an uphill battle in attaining equitable employment and wages within the sector.

Gender Gaps in Employment and Entrepreneurship

The tourism workforce in The Gambia is notably gendered: while women are the majority in vocational tourism programs, they represent only 35% of full-time employees, predominantly in lower-paying or seasonal positions, and hold a significantly lower proportion of high-income roles. In contrast, men dominate higher-earning roles, such as chefs and tour guides, which are seen as less accessible to women due to social norms and safety concerns surrounding late-hour shifts. This gender imbalance is mirrored in tourism entrepreneurship, where women-led businesses are overwhelmingly small, informal, and under-capitalized, often relegated to selling crafts or low-value products. Most women’s businesses are classified as micro, with 83% operating as solo ventures, compared to 63% for men, and few women-led businesses qualify as medium or large enterprises. Earnings reflect these differences, with female-owned businesses earning a median monthly profit of 3,000 GMD versus 5,000 GMD for male-owned businesses. Women entrepreneurs face numerous barriers to growth, including limited access to capital, inadequate skills in business management, and difficulty entering tourism value chains.

Leadership Gaps and Tourism’s Troubling Stigmas

Women in tourism leadership positions are also underrepresented in The Gambia, with the country ranking 168th out of 186 globally for female political empowerment. Women hold only 8.6% of parliamentary seats and have no presence at the top of major public tourism institutions, further complicating efforts to create inclusive policy reforms. The pervasive association of Gambian tourism with sex tourism compounds the challenges women face in the sector, as the stigma around sex work discourages many women from seeking front-facing tourism roles, often relegating them to back-end positions like housekeeping, which are lower-paying and come with fewer opportunities for advancement. Interviews reveal that women are more comfortable approaching female managers with concerns like harassment, indicating the positive impact that female leadership could have in creating safer, more inclusive work environments.

Strategies for Supporting Women in Tourism

To address these issues, the World Bank study recommends a multifaceted approach to support women’s employment, entrepreneurship, and leadership in Gambian tourism. Enhancing legal protections, such as anti-harassment policies and safe grievance reporting mechanisms, could help create a safer work environment. Recognizing hotels that prioritize gender inclusion could set a standard within the industry. Skill development is another crucial area, with calls to expand tourism education beyond workforce-level training to include management and high-earning tourism professions that could increase women’s income potential. Access to finance remains a significant obstacle for women entrepreneurs, who often lack the collateral to secure loans or the technical skills needed to navigate formal financial systems. Strengthening networks and expanding women’s access to markets and tourism segments like eco-tourism and conference tourism could create safer, higher-paying roles for women.

Building a Resilient and Inclusive Tourism Sector

Digital platforms can help connect women to training, networks, and market opportunities, particularly in sectors like agriculture, where women already have a presence supplying products to hotels and restaurants. Additionally, investing in market infrastructure, such as creating a centralized space for artisan products, could increase visibility and sales for women-owned businesses, enabling them to reach a broader customer base. Data collection efforts focused on gender disparities in tourism employment and business ownership are essential to crafting informed policies and measuring progress. Educational initiatives that introduce young people to tourism at the secondary level could help combat the stigma around women working in the industry and encourage more women to enter high-paying roles. Leadership development programs for women could further increase their representation in tourism-related decision-making, leading to more equitable policy outcomes. In addressing restrictive social norms, the report recommends engaging communities, men, and local leaders in gender awareness efforts to build support for women’s participation in tourism. Creating a supportive ecosystem for women in tourism requires comprehensive reforms that include legal protections, skill-building opportunities, increased market access, and cultural shifts toward gender equality. By addressing these intersecting challenges, the tourism sector in The Gambia can become a more inclusive, resilient contributor to the country’s economy, fostering sustainable growth and greater gender equity.