Women Occupational Empowerment in the Omani Tourism Sector

Investigating issues on women empowerment and employment are relatively well established in research. However, few works have been conducted in regard with tourism and even less in the Arabic region. Although tourism is a relatively new industry in Oman, women’s contributions to the tourism profession in this evolving country have evidentially increased in the recent years. Accordingly, this research aims to examine the attitude of the Omani women working in tourism toward this profession and to explore the extent to which gender horizontal or vertical segregation exists in the tourism employment, before illustrating the various driving and restraining factors influencing the Omani women career in tourism. A combination of semi-structures interviews and a unified survey was utilized in this research, which helped identify both qualitative and quantitative feedbacks. The research resulted in several major findings regarding the current situation of female workers in the Omani tourism sector, which could be significant for enhancing the ongoing efforts for empowering women in Oman.