Technology double gender gap in tourism business leadership
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Technology double gender gap in tourism business leadership Cristina Figueroa‑Domecq1 · Jesús Palomo2 · Mª Dolores Flecha‑Barrio2 · Mónica Segovia‑Pérez2 Received: 26 May 2019 / Revised: 19 December 2019 / Accepted: 14 January 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The evolution of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continues generating paradigm-shifts in the tourism industry, and the incorporation of gender diversity in the managing bodies of hospitality and tourism firms can become a factor of critical success. Nevertheless, women’s under-representation on decision-making positions in ICT or high-tech organizations (double gender gap) in the tourism industry has been hardly evaluated. The aim of this paper is to extend the understanding of the impact of this double level of discrimination at a vertical and horizontal level. The impact of stereotypes, gender roles and gendered organizations become the theoretical framework on this study. The biggest multinationals in the tourism industry were classified according to Eurostat’s definition of high-tech services in three intensive technological levels (High-Tech Knowledge Intensive; Knowledge-Intensive and Less Knowledge-lntensive). The composition of their Board of Directors (BOD) and Management Teams (MT) was analysed, through their annual reports and online public related documents, and evaluated through Content Analysis. Based on a total of 55 tourism related firms, the results confirm the direct relationship between the technological level of the companies and the lower participation of women on MT and BOD. Results also show that Gender Diversity Programs promote women representation on the BOD and that this relation is bi-directional, i.e. more women on BOD imply more gender diversity programs. Keywords Women · Corporate Governance · Technology · Tourism · Double gender gap · Board of Directors · Decision making
* Cristina Figueroa‑Domecq [email protected] 1
School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Surrey, Stag Hill, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
2
Rey Juan Carlos University, Paseo Artilleros s/n, Vicalvaro, 28032 Madrid, Spain
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1 Introduction The under-representation of women in decision-making position in organizations in general (e.g. Glass and Cook 2016; Stainback et al. 2016; Askehave and Zethsen 2014; Hatmaker 2013, Palomo et al. 2017; Laguna-Sánchez et al. 2014), and in tourism in particular (e.g. Segovia-Pérez et al. 2019a; Costa et al. 2017; Pritchard and Morgan 2017; Laguna-Sánchez et al. 2014) has been extensively studied. There is also an important research field and practitioners’ actions concerned about women’s gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) coursetaking (Wang and Degol 2017; Beede et al. 2011) and their limited participation in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) organizations, mainly in management positions (e.g. Ashcraft et al. 2016; Michie and Nelson 2006; Dasgupta and Stout 2014). Howev
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