Equality in Tourism director Daniela Moreno Alarcón is a gender and development consultant focusing on gender mainstreaming in tourism development. She has been involved in tourism projects around Cape Verde since 2010, and has more recently been employed by UN Women-Cape Verde, together with the Cabo-Verdean Institute for Gender Equality, to produce a ground-breaking Action Plan in Gender and Tourism.
The Cape Verde Ministry of Tourism has had the foresight and initiative to recognise that efficient and gender sensitive planning in the sector based on gender analysis will bring benefits for local development, impacting positively on women’s revenues and productivity.
Daniela’s fieldwork has been very rewarding and positive, as women are naturally keen to support this initiative. As it is, tourism is poorly linked to local development and the rural islands of Cape Verde, which are the poorest, don’t benefit from the opportunities that it generates. The situation for men and women in rural areas is very specific. With poor education and with the traditional division of productive and reproductive work, women have few opportunities to earn independent incomes. This is in a context where 48% of families are headed by women, mostly as single parents and are the sole providers for the family.
The Action Plan will now be fed back to the key stakeholders and the main objective is to incorporate the proposed actions in to the Government’s 2014-2024 Tourism Plan.
