09 August 2024

Is hospitality the underestimated cog in South Africa’s female empowerment wheel?

By Bryony van Zyl

Addressing female empowerment in South Africa — creating greater opportunities for women, ensuring more equitable workspaces, and fuelling career advancement — is a multifaceted issue. It requires concerted investment from policymakers, deliberate actions by business leaders and employers, and a collective drive to prioritise it wherever we can.

As we explore new avenues for transformation, I believe that hospitality and tourism  offer enormous potential to upskill women and to improve their social and economic standing within their homes, communities and society at large. Here are several reasons why the sector’s role in female empowerment shouldn’t be underestimated.

Hospitality provides accesses to some of South Africa’s most remote and distant areas

South Africa’s vast landscape and incredible natural beauty mean that hospitality and tourism providers can often be found in some of its most remote and difficult-to-access places. These areas often have little to no local industry, and are home to small communities of people with few economic prospects. While women make up 56% of the labour force in urban environments, they comprise just 40% in rural areas.

This presents hospitality providers with a unique opportunity to recruit locally, and to prioritise the recruitment of women as much as possible. In doing so, they stand to positively influence the families and communities of which these women are a part.

Bryony van Zyl is the Chief People Officer at Dream Hotels and Resorts.

It affords room for growth

In South Africa, only 40% of learners who begin Grade 1 complete matric. Many job seekers entering the market don’t have the education or experience necessary to walk into skilled positions. This challenge is at least a contributing factor to the country’s unemployment crisis.

Hospitality, however, requires a large number of entry-level positions. This low barrier to entry is an advantage: it provides job seekers, including women, with the opportunity to start earning an income while learning on the job. Individuals with the attitude and ambition have the potential to move on from those roles in time, into more skilled and higher-earning positions.

Of course, this assumes a level of responsibility on behalf of hospitality providers. Those who invest in learnerships and on-the-job training, and encourage internal hires, are likely to make a material difference to the professional advancement of their female employees.

Transferable skills open up opportunities for future employment and entrepreneurship

Many of the skills that hospitality and tourism require and nurture are essential and transferable across other businesses and sectors. By investing in their employees, operators stand to teach their employees skills they need not only to further their careers elsewhere but to start their own businesses, too.

Entrepreneurship has been identified as a critical component of South Africa’s future economic success. Among women, nurturing entrepreneurs has been shown to formalise economic activities and to improve women’s economic and social power.

The sector meets the next generation’s professional demands

As Gen Z enters the workforce, there’s a lot about the hospitality and tourism sector that meets their professional and personal wants and needs. Gen Z tends to prioritise working environments that are varied and stimulating, that offer a number of different avenues, and demonstrate concerted investment in the social and economic welfare of the communities of which they are a part. A critical ingredient in the working philosophy of today is purpose.

Hospitality providers are poised to leverage this, and to encourage young women beginning their working careers to find meaningful and sustainable long-term careers in the industry. At Dream Hotels, we ensure our employees are able to support initiatives that are important to them through our Touching Dreams initiative, which works with local NGOs and partners to uplift our local communities.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. Like most sectors in South Africa, hospitality has a history of being male dominated, and implementing more programmes and interventions would help women to progress better and quicker in their careers. But the opportunities are there. If properly leveraged, they have the potential to make a substantial difference to women working today and the generations to come.