
ITB ‘23 The Celebrating her Award
Is something changing in tourism?
We are happy to announce that we have been protagonists of a great International Women's Day, online from the Hybrid Studio Stage, at the Berlin tourism fair. as you can read here and in the Equality Award news.
With our gratification, The “Celebrating Her, Global Awards for Empowered Women in Tourism” was presented to Iaia Pedemonte for Responsible Tourism, to Carol Hay for Tourism Resilience and to Rupinder Brar for Tourism Leadership. The “Her Award” is a traditional ITB Award, given by the International Institute for Pace through Tourism, whose mission is to spread awareness about the power of tourism as a force of good, to use tourism to make the world a better place, to make it the first largest global peace industry. As Ajay Prakash, IITP CEO, said “The award is to celebrate the role models of women, possibly in higher positions, making decisions who can make a difference, women of substance”. But how can women be really inspiring? This is what the winners and the panel experts suggested: Carol Hay recalled how she il now mentoring male and female young workers as she was supported by a great woman in her caribbean experience, “sharing cultures and diversity because tourism is for one and all”. Iaia Pedemonte then said that ‘women are the first to restart after a crisis, and it could be the time to start using tourism as a crisis resolution tool, with women as peace-bridge-builders”. Then Rupinder Brar, describing the way she built a platform during the pandemic encouraged to “recognise women in informal sectors, because they are already co-creating development”.
In the panel, Daniela Wagner talked with Helena Egan- strategy officer at Adventure Tech-, Debbie Flynn – managing partner at FINN Partners – and Ryka Jean Francois - CSR officer at ITB. They all agreed that tourism is a way of sharing, that already women are inspiring for future generations, that the practical things that we could do, to help drive that agenda forward, are: raising awareness, education and advocates for gender equality, also with the men, and putting people together, sharing cultures and understanding. Finally, we also need equal pay and more women on board with higher employment, because it has been demonstrated that higher women‘s role contributes to higher Country GDPT.
Rika added that ‘In some emerging destinations it is clear that women are getting more positions, even though their pay is not equal even in Germany. And looking at how some regimes are now considering women, where they do not have the basic rights, we can only hope that younger generations will continue to fight for equality and inclusion for all diverse groups. We need peace, otherwise, there is no tourism, and there is no gender equity without climate action plans ‘.
Debbie gave an example of how raising gender issues from a simple action and from melting communities: ‘The Female Rangers Day and Week, is a fantastic global initiative that gave guides great coverage, both showing the role of women protecting wildlife, but at the same time indicating how valuable they are to the local communities’.
‘Let’s look at The African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) – added Helena- more than 600 girls in 11 African Countries have been trained as computer programmers, creators, and designers, placing them on track to take up studies and careers in the information, communication and technology and as role models’.
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