Using Shunpikes: Women's Strategy for Overcoming Social Constraints in Tourism

The current paper examines the differences between men's and women's tourism experiences as an aspect of leisure. Four factors, including normative restrictions, female roles, economic weakness, and lack of security feeling, lead women to regulate their tourism travels different from men. For this purpose, the data of the National Survey of Values, Attitudes and Behavior of Tourism in Iran, with a sample size of 5009 people from all provinces of the country, were secondary analyzed. Eight hypotheses related to tourism motivations and behaviors, including having tourism experience, and choosing accommodation, vehicle and tour, were compared between men and women. The results showed that women who traveled alone or with their friends/colleagues, comparing with men, traveled more with tours, less by personal cars, less for recreation purpose, and more for pilgrimage motivation. Women were more likely to travel for visiting relatives when they were alone, and were less likely to camp in trips when traveled with their friends or colleagues. Although the frequency of women who traveled alone or with friends/colleagues were less than men, since their trips with families and relatives were more than men, the total amount of domestic travel by women were not significantly less than men. While the number of foreign trips of women were less than men, the frequency of foreign trips of employed women were not significantly different with men. It seems that despite the serious shortcomings in the quality of women's tourism experience compared to men, by using structural and normative shunpikes, they tried to compensate it.