PHL pushing gender goal in new Asean tourism plan

THE Philippines is spearheading the preparation of a new strategic plan for tourism in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), and is bent on including gender parity and inclusive growth as regional objectives.

This developed as the Department of Tourism (DOT) believes the integration of the Asean into one economic community will help boost gender equality across the region by standardizing hiring and promotion guidelines, especially in the tourism sector.

The Philippines is the acknowledged leader in the region in terms of gender equality, with a number of female chief executives and other managerial positions filled up by women. The country ranked ninth among 142 countries in the Gender Gap Index of 2014 by the World Economic Forum.

In an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the recent Asean Gender and Development (GAD) Forum on Tourism at the Diamond Hotel Manila, Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez Jr. said the Asean integration by end-2015 would mean a “tightening or streamlining of standards. For Filipino women especially, they have played a significant role in upgrading those standards…. Gender equality, when you get to the bottom of it, is just about standards; meaning having precise and nonsubjective reasons to choose one person over the other. When you standardize, you don’t rely on one’s personal bias.”

He noted that the “biggest hurdle” in achieving gender equality “lies in the people’s attitudes, outmoded notions of who is more appropriate and not, i.e., ‘women are weaker than men….’ The continuing hurdles continue to be on the cultural and emotional habits of people, and that changes from society to society.”

Jimenez said the Asean region, as a whole, still has a long way to go in achieving gender equality, but for the Philippines, “we are in a very good place.”

The GAD forum was participated in by representatives from Asean member-nations who talked about the best practices in improving women’s leadership in their respective countries, as well as tools and strategies to achieve a more gender-responsive tourism industry.

The integration of the Asean into one economic community will allow workers and executives in tourism industry of the Philippines to be hired by neighboring countries based on a set of standardized criteria acceptable to all member-nations. Similarly, it will also be easy for tourism and travel firms in the Philippines to hire staff from other Asean nations, based on the same standards.

For his part, Tourism Assistant Secretary Rolando Canizal said the Philippines is leading the way in preparing the Asean tourism plan. “One of the projects in terms of addressing directions toward inclusive growth and competitiveness is making sure that gender [equality] becomes an important [goal] of the Asean.”

He said this would cover the basics, like “understanding more where women are situated in Asean tourism and, second, how women are being more empowered and given opportunities in job creation, assuming greater responsibilities, and becoming more involved in the decision-making process.”

The new Asean tourism plan for 2016 to 2025 is scheduled to be completed and presented by January 2016, “in time for the Philippines’s hosting of the Asean tourism forum. The new strategic plan for Asean will be launched next year during the ministerial meeting,” Canizal added.

During the forum, Aileen Clemente, president of Rajah Travel Corp., offered a few strategies to achieve a more gender-responsive tourism industry.

To address gender-based occupational segregation, she said, the education and training of women in nontraditional areas should be increased, and codes of practice that include guidelines on equal opportunity programs can be formulated by the organization.

She also suggests the promotion of “community-based tourism initiatives to empower the vulnerable sectors.”

To overcome disadvantages of gaining entry into the work force because of low levels of education, she advised “lowering standards for entry and then provide on-the-job training to compensate.” Clemente also advocated reviewing advertising and marketing campaigns and tools “regarding the use of stereotypical images and aim at portraying the diversity of workers in a realistic manner.”

Clemente noted that in her own company, 75 percent of employees are female, 22 percent are male and 3 percent are LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders).

She stressed that there was “no difference in pay” among her male, female, LGBT employees for the particular positions they occupy, i.e., a male travel agent will receive the same salary as a female or LGBT travel agent.

Jimenez said gender equality “has been worked on for a long time socially and culturally in the Philippines and, therefore, the way toward equality has been easier for [our country]. It will have its challenges in different countries. I don’t pretend to know what all those challenges are. [But] in some societies, they have a much longer way to go in seeing women as equals. Therefore, they will have to go through a different pathway as we have gone through.” –Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror