An Assessment of Female Employees on Future Career Prsopects in the Hotels of Dehradun and Mussoorie, Uttrakhand

Abstract

In today’s scenario females occupy the majority of the hotel space in India, but there arises a need we must become more proactive leaders to have their voices heard. In recent years, the influence of women has been growing vertically in hotel industry. There have been significant increases in the number of women holding leadership roles at all levels of management in hotels, inns, lodges and resorts across the country. This paradigm shift is not limited within the world of Hospitality. But just as the nearly 11% of the Indian Parliament electorate made up of women felt they should have a stronger voice in Parliament, it is only logical that the women making up 57.5% of the hotel industry’s total workforce, according to a report published by Times of India (dated February 23, 2013) in south India and West Bengal, 55-60 percent of the employees in hotels are women while in Maharashtra, Punjab and Delhi the figure is 40-50 percent should have a voice in the direction of the industry. While in the common context the Hospitality industry remains male-dominated, particularly in the upper echelons of management. While this situation is changing worldwide, it remains more entrenched in State like Uttrakhand. This research paper reviews the literature on women in the hotel industry in order to contextualize the situation in Dehradun and Mussoorie, Uttrakhand where a significant and growing government-supported tourism sector makes issues of gender and industry practice especially timely. Female respondents over-whelmingly emphasized that they have got plenty of job opportunities to build a career in hotel industry. Gender composition of the hotel workforce is analysed, and the directions for future investigation in the area are suggested.

Keywords: Female Employees, Gender Composition, Female Managers, Soft Skills, Leadership, Gender inequality

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