Gendered Identities in the Work of Overseas Tour Reps

Abstract

Gender construction within the tourism and leisure industry is underresearched. In this article, we draw on empirical research on overseas tour reps to consider the ways in which men and women working alongside each other in the same feminized role 'do gender'. In particular we explore how these workers deal with the particular dilemmas of the sexualization of women at work and the men reps' potential threat to their heterosexuality, in a role where the boundaries between work and play are ambiguous. We argue that reps reveal masculinities and femininities that comply with traditional expectations. Young men reps are portrayed in 'laddish' terms in relation to their engagement with alcohol and sexual relationships with guests. Women reps emphasize their role as providers of emotional labour and taking control of guests' perceptions and report refraining from sexual relationships with guests. Even within the same work role in this case study, men and women appear to construct different work identities.

Men on the move: narratives of migration and work among low-paid migrant men in London

“…For those men working in jobs more usually considered 'women's work' such as cleaning or care work, the tendency was to develop a range of compensatory strategies and rationales for coping with the challenges such work presented to their masculinity (Guerrier and Adib 2004;Lupton 2000;Simpson 2004). Most obviously, few of these men explicitly acknowledged that their work was traditionally associated with women (also Rouse Men on the move 865 1992).…”

Revisiting hospitality's marginal worker thesis: A mono-occupational perspective

“…Marshall (1986) goes further by suggesting that it is deviant practices, such as skimming the bar and fiddling the books, that actually palliate the impacts of perceived poor working conditions, and enhance job satisfaction. Marshall (1986) also establishes that the hospitality work environment is conducive to a blurring of boundaries between work and leisure, a point subsequently developed by Van Maanen and Barley (1984) and certainly supported by Guerrier and Adib (2004) in the case of tour reps.…”

Performing tourism: exploring the productive consumption of tourism in enclavic spaces

“…The topic of gendered and sexualised labour in tourism has begun receiving some attention as part of what Veijola and Valtonen (2007, p. 16) describe as the ' "embodiment turn" in both social sciences and tourism studies' (see for instance Tyler and Abbott, 1998;Tyler and Hancock, 2001;Guerrier and Adib, 2004). In his study of Smoky's restaurant, Crang (1994), for instance, highlights the complexities of the roles that tourism employees perform in shaping the interaction between producers of tourism (the actors in the process of constructing tourism spaces) and the consumers of tourism (tourists and travellers).…”