Gendering knowledge in tourism: Gender (in)equality initiatives in the tourism academy

The tourism academy is a key site through which gender is produced, reproduced and, potentially, challenged. In this paper, we draw on Acker’s (1990) concept of gendered organisations to present a case study of a tourism department preparing to apply for an international gender equality charter-accreditation, Athena SWAN. Ketso was used as a method to try to stimulate active involvement of all staff members and breakdown traditional hierarchies within the team, and to encourage honest discussion about gender and inequality in this context. This was only partially successful, however, and we discuss how explicit focus on gender (in)equality through this process both enabled discussion of usually ignored topics and revealed entrenched gender power dynamics and structural and institutional barriers to reform. The paper illustrates both the possibilities of gender equality initiatives like Athena SWAN to highlight many of the gendered practices of tourism academia and the limitations they hold for overcoming deep-rooted gender inequality.