Impact of Tourism and Finance on Women Empowerment in Asia

Authors: Kainat Nauman

Abstract

In the World, the fifth agenda of United Nations development is to enhance women empowerment and reduce gender inequality. This agenda highlights the fundamental human rights and it is also a main foundation for prosperity and peace in the World. Females face disparity in most of the sectors like in education and employment. The tourism sector can contribute to the women and it is an important initiative of the World to recover women from miserable life to a sustainable by providing them finance. This study explores the impact of tourism development on women empowerment by facilitating some financial factors. The financial sector can play the positive impact of tourism on women empowerment through the establishment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas. The financial sector support to the women to get loans on easy installment and promote handicrafts and cultural heritage for boosting tourism sector. This study focused on the panel data of selected Asian countries by using time period from 1996 to 2018. Study use four econometric models, panel models, GMM, robust least square and granger causality test. The results show that the tourism indicator and financial services play a significant role on women empowerment.