The Future Of Sustainable Tourism
The future of traveling is sustainable travel, and the future of sustainable travel is the inclusion of women.
It has been almost 2 years since we started our project of integrating local women in more active roles within the travel industry of Peru, and more than a year since we started taking women porters on the Inca Trail. Since then, a lot has happened during the process of achieving our goals of turning the travel industry of Peru into something more inclusive and less discriminatory toward women and more just and fair to all. Here is the list of some of those positive things that have occurred in these 2 years.
Inspiration
The coverage that we have received from the most important media outlet of Peru has been crucial in encouraging women to register in higher numbers as women porters, debunking the old notion that this job can be done only by men. Also, if that wasn’t good enough, in its end of the year edition, El Comercio Peru, in its printed end of the year version, considered the women porters of the Inca Trail one of the most beautiful and inspiring things to have happened in Peru in 2018. Now, for a country with a deeply rooted male chauvinistic mentality, this is a great achievement. Further to this, our work has inspired one of our largest competitors and as a result, they have started to hire women porters too. This is not only flattering but something we are proud of and want to encourage in all of our competitors because that helps us achieve our goal of turning this market into something more inclusive for women.
Empowerment From The Bottom Up
What does success mean for women in the Andean mountains of Peru? Is it merely to be porters and make some money to make a living or is it something deeper than that? Empowerment is about enabling people to reach their goals and dreams and with the support and encouragement of Evolution, two of our first women porters have become tour guides and now work as Lead Guides in the mountains of Machu Picchu. How inspirational is this, long are the days in which women were told not to work on the Inca trail, and now these women are tour leaders. The future is bright for them and Evolution Treks Peru will empower them to go even further. There is a documentary in the making about these two women porters.
Pushing For Equality
On a fundamental basis, the task of empowering women and including them in this industry means not only equal employment opportunity but also equal pay for equal work. Our women porters earn the same money male porters do. Despite the difference in the weight that male (20Kg+) and women (15Kg) porters carry, both earn the same money and both put in the same hours of work while on the trail. On a secondary level but equally important, hiring women and paying them less would seem quite discriminating. In addition, in 2019, 50% of our tour leaders are women. Once again, this is something unprecedented for an industry where only a couple of years ago, women were considered incapable of hiking these mountains let alone leading tours. Evolution Treks Peru does not hire women tour guides as assistant tour guides confining them to secondary roles or tokenizing women for profit. All Evolution Treks Peru women are Lead tour guides, as a result, there has been a higher demand from tour operators toward hiring women tour guides.