EMPOWERING VOICES: CONFRONTING THE GLASS CEILING FOR EGYPTIAN WOMEN IN THE TOURISM AND HERITAGE SECTOR

Women’s involvement in the Egyptian tourism and heritage management has been increasing over the past few decades, especially in archaeology, heritage conservation and site management. However, there is no evidence to date that they can crack their glass ceiling and move above into senior leadership positions in the Egyptian tourism industry despite their growing proportion in the labour market. This study explores the barriers preventing Egyptian women from attaining more leadership positions in heritage and tourism management and discusses practical solutions for overcoming such challenges. A phenomenological approach, adopting indepth interviews, with experienced women in Egypt who have progressed in the tourism and heritage sector. Thematic analysis resulted in identifying five key challenges for their accessibility to leadership, i.e. organizational and structural issues, regulatory issues, cultural and social norms, individual issues and historical issues. Each of these issues or challenges has sub issues, which all combined to deter Egyptian women’s accessibility to leadership despite the interventions recently made by the government for women empowerment. All these challenges are overlapped and combined to hinder the ascent of women into leadership in heritage sites. These issues are associated with prejudice against female managers, who are stereotyped and perceived as nurturing and housewife, while leadership requires certain traits such as decisiveness, assertiveness and dominance as society and other colleagues assumed. This prejudice is noticed in minimizing the role of women and stigmatizing them as leaders by providing either negative or less favourable evaluation of them. The results align with notion made by Role Congruity Theory and Glass Ceiling Theory. The results suggest that addressing these concerns is vital for ensuring better integration of women in labour market and ultimatly to the economy overall. Special attention should be to addressing the cultural and organizational challenges to enable women move above the glass ceiling and achieve senior positions in the Egyptian tourism industry. The research suggested several policy and practical implications for decision makers and senior management of the tourism and heritage sector in Egypt. This research acknowledges the importance of policy reforms, support actions, and institutional development to increase women’s empowerment in Egyptian heritage.