Gender-Based Harassment in Tourism Academia: Organisational Collusion, Coercion and Compliance

This chapter presents a critical synthesis of a range of literature from tourism studies, organization studies and the wider social sciences, and has two interrelated aims. First, to locate gender-based harassment (GBH) as an issue in the tourism academy and thereby de-isolate, empower and reassure victims/survivors that they are not alone in experiencing such ordeals. Second, by discussing the issue, to create a lexicon for resistance and recovery for those subjected to GBH, which may help them to name and share their experiences. It is argued that higher education (HE) institutions must recognize that they inherently organize in ways that support orderings and behaviours that go unchecked and nurture harassment. The chapter then discusses how, in our neoliberal age, women and other underrepresented groups tend to be isolated and marginalized in HE hierarchies, before examining how GBH occurs in the tourism academy and concluding with an agenda for future enquiry.