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Abstract

Tourism homestays are increasingly presented as an opportunity for women’s empowerment and inclusion around the world. However, this study argues that the focus on homestays as entrepreneurial opportunities for women obscures the persistence of patriarchal structures that limit women’s agency when their labour is commercialised. Grounded in theories of “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987) supplemented by role theory and critical feminist perspectives, the study highlights how gender is enacted and reproduced daily in homestays. This research draws on qualitative interviews with women hosts in the state of Kerala, India to explore how the gendered division of labour operates within family-run homestays, emphasising how women’s domestic responsibilities are extended into the economic sphere without a corresponding reorganisation of power, recognition, and rewards. The findings show that women’s domestic work is extended into economic spaces and sold in the name of “hospitality” while remaining undervalued within households. Men, on the contrary, occupy managerial and financial roles, reinforcing the patriarchal prescriptions of ownership and decision-making. By extending the doing gender theory into a collectivist Global South setting, the study demonstrates that gender performances in the Global South are shaped less by individual accountability and more by community surveillance, moral expectations, and social penalties surrounding femininity, respectability, and propriety. The study also highlights theoretical and practical contributions for policy and training and proposes future research directions for investigating gendered dynamics within tourism entrepreneurship and homestays.

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