Tourism employment and evolving gender norms in Peru

This study draws on ethnographic research in the town of Pisac, Peru, to interrogate how tourism employment may enable Mestiza women to contest traditional gender norms around work and family. Adopting a decolonial feminist lens, it analyses how Iberian Catholic, colonially imposed gender and ethnic norms shape women's tourism labour experiences. Findings reveal that, while tourism often reinforces patriarchal norms, it also creates openings for resistance through women's financial authority in the household, redefinitions of domestic responsibility, and collective practices of mutual support. Women's roles remain ambivalent, as they both reproduce and contest patriarchal structures. This study contributes to understanding how colonially shaped gender and ethnic constructs influence women's capacities to challenge patriarchy through tourism work. • Decolonial feminist lens assists intersectional analyses of female tourism labour. • Tourism offers Mestiza women a platform to destabilise patriarchal gender norms. • Colonially imposed norms shape gender roles for Mestiza women in tourism. • Mestiza women both contest and replicate gender norms through tourism labour. • Tourism markets enable Mestiza women to enact sororidad and contest gender norms.