Leisure & sport

Women's rights

Fight for Workforce Equity: Kilimanjaro Porters
Imposition of physical standards: sporting events
Insufficient attention on union agendas
Fight for Workforce Equity: Kilimanjaro Porters

Fight for Workforce Equity 

Guides and porters are crucial for the success of an adventure tour but they are often subject to difficult working conditions. Women who want to become guides face additional challenges. In many of the most popular hiking destinations, women who hike, travel or bike are still uncommon. Obtaining a guiding license and finding work through a trekking operator is a complicated endeavor for most women. The Tanzanian Women Guides Foundation (TWGF) is dedicated to helping women succeed as both mountain and safari guides. Offering a month-long field course during which potential guide candidates demonstrate their physical and leadership abilities, the TWGF prepares women for a government-run guide-training course, for which the TWGF pays the fees. Supporting women to become certified guides in just three months, TWGF promotes women's representation and empowerment. However, certification doesn't guarantee employment. Other issues concerning female guides and porters, such as the need for women-only tents or alternatives for women on maternity leave, keep tour operators from hiring female tour guides and porters. 

Imposition of physical standards: sporting events

Imposition of physical standards

Many hostesses at large sporting events have denounced both the requirements and the working conditions to which they were subjected. For example, women who worked at the Comte Godó Tennis Tournament in Barcelona were forced to work in miniskirts and without coats at only three degrees Celsius during the tournament. Other sporting events have decided to remove the image hostesses’ figure, understanding that their work objectified them and showed them as a decorative element. Examples are the cyclist competition Tour of Catalonia, which in 2017 banned hostesses’ appearance at the awards ceremony, and Formula 1, which at the beginning of the 2018 season also decided to remove the so-called ‘grid girls’.

Insufficient attention on union agendas

Insufficient attention on union agendas 

Hostesses are an excellent example of underrepresentation in trade unions as they fulfil the typical characteristics of having non-standard contracts and being young. Furthermore, these are transitional jobs characterised by liminality, a concept used to explain an uncertain work stage that represents the length of time a person is looking for their vocation. Liminality can affect solidarity at work; this is a group reasonably satisfied with its short-term employment situation and chooses to remain on the side-lines of labour organisations.