Empowerment and women in adventure tourism : a negotiated journey

Women’s participation in adventure tourism is growing, yet few studies have explored this group of tourists. This conceptual paper seeks to extend our understanding of female adventure tourists by examining the empowering journey women can take through constraint negotiation to enjoy the benefits of adventure tourism. Using content analysis to review the literature on women’s adventure experiences in tourism and recreation settings reveals prominent themes that have been consolidated to propose constraint, negotiation and benefit categories. A conceptual model is presented that illustrates the opportunities for women’s empowerment within these categories and examines the interrelationships and interdependency between them. The model shows that constraints, negotiations and benefits can be experienced simultaneously, at different points in a woman’s adventure tourism journey and used as a vehicle for empowerment. Women will also re-evaluate these categories before, during and after their adventure tourism experience. Therefore, the categories are not fixed and evolve each time a woman participates in adventure tourism throughout her life. Suggestions are made for further study in this under-researched area

Women’s outdoor adventure experiences on Instagram: Exploring user-generated content

Little is known about how everyday women self-present their outdoor adventure experiences, and how these compare to mainstream media, which often reinforces narratives of hegemonic masculinity. To better understand how everyday women portray their outdoor adventure experiences, we examine user-generated content on Instagram associated with the hashtags #womenoutdoors, #womeninadventure and #shewentwild. In total, 1154 posts were collected. Analysis revealed that Instagram facilitates a ‘DigiPlace’ that contributes to new understandings and ways of being outdoors for everyday women. More specifically, our work indicates that the ubiquity of social media helps to reshape the nature of female participation in outdoor adventure activities as well as giving everyday women greater visibility in outdoor landscapes