Voyages au féminin: gender, tourism and transnationality

Abstract

Departuring from the development of an international tourism market targeted toward women, the rise of international tourism in Brazil and a significant number of subjects with negative connotation on foreign tourists published in the national media (facts dating to the early 2000s ), the purpose of this project is to investigate the presence of foreign women traveling in Brazil, especially alone or without male counterparts, in a context of leisure and beach tourism, Jericoacoara, CE. A preliminary research points out to contradictions between, on one hand, ideas that circulate globally on the spread of women in international tourism (confluent with debates and cultural changes in Western world on "gender mainstreaming") and, secondly, the differences and social & political-economic inequalities between states / nations / cultures of North and South, which stand out in the context of tourism from the analytical perspective of the interaction between gender and other categories of differentiation. The aim therefore is to understand the expressions and representations in terms of femininity, masculinity, embodyement, "ethnicity" and nationality that permeate and surround the tours of these women in Brazil, turning to the experiences of these tourists (features and travel itineraries, options for activities, interaction with other / the tourists, with the culture / local population, the social profiles) as well as local perceptions about them.