Gender and career: the nature of women´s career development in tourism sector in Finland

Abstract

Tourism sector is widely female dominated and although, the number of women in middle management has grown, it is men that mainly occupy the top positions. The promotion of gender equality has become widely accepted in Finland, which in working life means that genders are treated equally, without discrimination. The main purpose for the study is to investigate how the career development is gendered in tourism sector in Finland and does women’s career development differ from men’s career development. The research combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. The data was collected from the middle and upper management in Scandic Hotels in Finland through questionnaires and an interview. The empirical results indicate that there are differences between genders in career development. Men had advanced in their career considerably faster than women. However, most of the respondents were willing to advance, although men estimated their prospects to be better. According to the findings, the reasons for differences in career development are several, the most common barriers being: location, age, family and lack of possibilities, two latter being greater among women. Several women named also gender to be one of the obstacles for advancement.