WE LEAD represents an important first innovation opportunity to develop expertise in responding to the needs of a specific new target group: women leaders in the tourism, hospitality & leisure sectors. It seeks to break new ground in this sector by forming a clear picture of the strengths, weaknesses & levers of change to improve representation & performance at the leadership level in these sectors.
Tourism is the 3rd largest socio-economic sector in the EU and it has a pivotal role to play in achieving the objectives at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular the commitments to gender equality & the empowerment of women of Sustainable Development Goal 5 Achieving Gender Equality & remove the disparity in the numbers of women in the sector at low-skilled & poorly paid vs the numbers who are managers or at senior level. While women make up 25.5% of executive committee members, most work in HR rather than management roles. WiHTL (Women in Hospitality Tourism and Leisure) highlight how the tourism sector is “failing to promote women to the highest levels of decision-making despite having a larger pool of female talent from which to draw”.
In hospitality, women are heavily concentrated in low-paid jobs & only 1 in 22 CEOs is a woman. This is underpinned by the key challenge of our lifetime- Climate Change. WE LEAD’s overall objective is to improve the quality & relevance of women leadership in tourism education so that women are better equipped to use their skills to embrace leadership roles & empower them to face challenges, especially transition towards climate neutrality. In order to achieve this we have developed and delivered learning resources freely accesible on the Project website:
- Tourism Gender & Climate action: Discovery Report – creates a solid knowledge base to use as a starting point for teaching material.
- A Compendium of European Best Practices – offers stories from women leaders within tourism in the countries participating in the We Lead Erasmus+ project.
- By sharing stories from women engaged in different leadership roles within tourism we hope to both inform and inspire future female leaders as well as creating awareness within the sector about the importance of women’s leadership in reaching the goals of sustainable and climate-responsible tourism.
- Educators Guide to Innovative Learning Pathways – make the case for new teaching strategies, highlighting flexible impactful new approaches to transversal skills including sustainability.
- Open Educational Resources – provide teachers and individuals with ready to use resources for digital, hybrid or in person classes aiding their teaching on understanding the leadership skillset, with a focus on female leaderships approaches to climate action within toursim industry.
University of Akureyri – Momentum – Cebanc/Cdea – Tranformia – European E-Learning Institute
