Over the past 50 years, there has been an increase in women’s employment and education rates globally, fueled by legal changes making gender-based discrimination illegal and a shift in social attitudes towards women working (England, 2010). Despite this influx of women into paid work, disparity among men’s and women’s wages in the European Union persists (Eurostat, 2015). Recent research on gendered career interruptions and pay in the hospitality industry has found a link between feminized caring roles and the gender wage gap, highlighting how gender roles strongly influence economic discourse (Cebrian
& Moreno, 2015). Thus, creating gender analyses is essential for a more holistic representation of today’s reality (Ferguson & Alarcon, 2014
). Tourism is a highly gendered industry, with strong horizontal and vertical segregation of occupations and a prevalence of men in top-level management positions (Baum, 2013; Baum, 2015; Baum, Kralj, Robinson, & Solnet, 2016). More specifically in Portugal, where this study is located, most (57%) tourism workers are female (Eurostat, 2015), but most (60%) tourism managers are male. Worldwide, there are also low numbers of women in managerial positions, especially in executive positions. For example, in 2013, only 14.6% of Fortune 500 companies were headed by women (Soares, Barkiewicz, Mulligan-Ferry, Fendler, & Wai Chun Jun, 2013). In Portugal, only 7.3% of stock indexed companies were led by women in 2014, which is one of the lowest percentages in Europe (Catalyst, 2015). While women’s absence from managerial positions has been justified by relative educational levels, women are now more educated then men (Costa, Carvalho, Caçador, & Breda, 2012; Costa, Breda, Malek, & Durao, 2013 ~ ). Indeed, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development states that in European countries, educational barriers have now virtually disappeared (OECD, 2012). Thus, it is useful and important to look to the sociocultural barriers women may face in being able to adhere to current versions of tourism management discourse.