2.1. Gender Theory and Women’s Participation in Tourism
Gender theory as a social structure must clarify certain phenomena in organizations with attention to gender implications. Gender is deeply embedded as a basis for stratification not only in our personalities, our cultural rules or institutions, but in all of these, and in complicated ways [
1,
2,
3]. Gender structure distinguishes gender-based opportunities and constraints, and this has consequences in three dimensions: (1) at the individual level for the development of the gender self; (2) during the interaction, how men and women face different cultural expectations even when they fill identical structural positions; and (3) in institutional domains where explicit regulations on the distribution of resources and material goods are gender-specific [
4,
5,
6]. Agency theory is a theoretical approach to an enterprise that explains the complex relationships, actors, interests and goals of an enterprise through an agency relationship, that is, a contract in which one or more principal(s) hires another person(s) to do a certain job, giving them the authority to make some key decisions. With the development of the company, these relationships become more complex, and management emerges as the principal agent of the owner or the original principal and assumes his role in relation to the employees [
7]. This theory is an important explanatory instrument in economics and finance, and is a good basis and framework for considering the interests, goals and relationships of shareholders, management and employees, as well as many processes within the organization in promoting and achieving them [
8]. The problem of female workforce employment is certainly a driving force for research, and such research can contribute to a broader perspective on the issue and influence structural change for better business. Public perceptions of the enviable status and position of women in tourism are masked by non-transparent data and statistics that speak in favor of employment growth in the sector, record earnings and economic impacts, such as the share of tourism revenue in national GDP [
9]. Through labor rights and employers’ attitudes towards them, the dimensions of gender discrimination (unequal position of women in this sector, and in society in general) are shown, as well as the complexity of their position within the tourism and hospitality sector [
10]. As for women themselves and their status, the fact is that more women than men work in this industry [
11]. However, it is also true that they are employed in low-paying jobs [
12]. There is evidence that women’s participation in the services sector has improved, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but undoubtedly, they continue to encounter some obstacles that reflect labor market discrimination [
13]. However, as the participation rate of women in the labor market increases, their working conditions are less favorable than men’s [
13], and are therefore mostly in these low-quality and less valued jobs [
14,
15]. Accoding to Pleck [
16] women in Turkey suffer injustice due to social norms and prejudices and the lower position of women in society in relation to men.
The participation of women in the business world of tourism has increased in recent years, and there has even been an increase in the share of women in management and leadership. The tourism industry has always been considered a sector that employs a low-skilled workforce and offers low-paid jobs. A similar study on the participation of women in the tourism sector of Karnataka in India [
17]. The obtained data indicate that in the tourism industry, the percentage of women working in the industry is increasing, but their function is dominated by unskilled, low-paid jobs. In her research, she pointed out the importance of tourism in the great contribution of women’s employment. Accor hotel groups launched a program in 2011, in which it employs over 160.000 people in 3.500 hotels in 92 countries around the world. They brought the "Charter on Diversity", which emphasizes the fight against prejudice and stereotypes, and thus the goal of achieving equality for women in the tourism sector. That year, the percentage of employed women was 50%. However, only 27% of women were in the hotel management sector, and 13% of directors (
https://sites.google.com/a/nf-int.org/digitale-bibliothek/home/tourismus/dossiers, accessed on 16 May 2021). According to Alrwajfah et al. [
18] point out that there are barriers to women’s empowerment and employment in tourism, and show that women do not have a favorable view of the economic impacts of tourism. Interesting study called “Women’s participation and Tourism industry”, gives an overview that India employs a large number of women in the tourism sector, but the gender ratio has almost reached a level playing field [
19]. By the data of census the current Sex Ratio of India in 2015 is 943 Females/1000 Males. In a paper entitled “Woman Empowerment through Entrepreneurship in Service Sector with special Reference to SHGs in Tourism”, are shown data on the increasing participation of women in tourism, especially in the rural tourism development sector in India [
20]. According to research which was provide in in a paper called “Women in Turkish tourism”, show results indicating that with the development of tourism in Turkey, women overcame prejudices, broke away from tradition, and first started working in their homes, becoming strengthened both economically, socially and individually by entering the business and using the opportunities provided by tourism [
21].
Similar research on women’s empowerment has been conducted in the following countries: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Oman [
22]. In a total sample of 784 female respondents, they found that perceptions of women’s work in tourism and women’s entrepreneurship are significant predictors of women’s empowerment in the tourism sector. The United Arab Emirates ranks first in the impact of women’s empowerment on tourism development. A group of authors in their study entitled “Perceptions of Women’s Empowerment in Ramsar, a Tourist Destination in Northern Iran", identified 10 unique perceptions of women”s empowerment in tourism [
23]. They also emphasize that they must not neglect the sociocultural aspects of empowerment, the extent to which women perceive themselves as empowered. According to Boley et al. [
24]. The increasing participation of women in tourism has been confirmed. They emphasize the intercultural validity of resident empowerment through the tourism scale (RETS) in the city of Oizumi, Japan. The poor position and participation of women in tourism is influenced by marginal, but also feminist postcolonial, political poststructuralist approach that prevails in the country [
25].
2.2. Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment
Job quality in the broadest sense encompasses employment and job characteristics (hours, salaries, skills required), general work environment and the labor market (working conditions, training, equal opportunities, social dialogue) and subjective perception or appraisal of their job (job satisfaction, career expectations) [
26]. Insufficient research and attention to this part of the business is often an indicator of failure to respond to modern market trends. An employee who is the potential holder of the idea as of a change, depending on their will, can become motivated enough to put in the effort in the day-to-day business, can become the one who begins to align his interests with the interests of the company where they are employed, and does not intend to leave it as long as it responds to his demands and challenges him [
27,
28]. Equality theory proposed by Mercurio [
29], built on the belief that employees become demotivated about their job and their employer if they feel their inputs (hard work, loyalty, commitment, skills, ability, flexibility, tolerance, enthusiasm, trust in leaders, support colleagues, dedication), are much greater than outputs (financial rewards, accolades, reputation, responsibility, sense of advancement and personal development, compassion for achievement, praise, incentives, job security) [
30]. Employees respond to this “unjust” disparity in various ways, including low motivation, reduction of work effort (down to the level that the employee considers parity with the rewards he receives), open expression of dissatisfaction, reduced loyalty until “diversion”, damage to the employer [
31,
32,
33]. Research shows that the most dissatisfied are young people [
34,
35,
36]. They have no work experience and do not yet know what looking for a job really looks like, they have high expectations, because they have just finished their education, their salary is the lowest, and there are generally a greater number of superiors above the firm’s hierarchy. As working life increases, people are more and more satisfied with their jobs, and before retirement, interest in work decreases, and therefore dissatisfaction increases [
37]. Additionally, each truth has two sides, so the situation should be seen through the eyes of employers. It is not only a question of how much a worker is given when performing a job, it is also a question of what the job offers to employees [
38].
In the existing literature, commitment to the organization, job satisfaction and involvement in the business is considered to be the most significant and the most researched attitude towards business [
39,
40,
41]. To begin with, consideration of a construct within an organization is characterized by a view of commitment to behavior [
42]. Research starts from Becker’s side-betting model [
41], and the model of commitment suggested by Mowday et al. [
43]. The last era is the most famous and well-researched multidimensional model of Meyer and Allen [
44,
45]. The beginning of model development is related to their earlier research [
46] in which they claim that commitment to the organization is referred to as affective commitment. The same authors concluded that it is a multidimensional construct, starting from different definitions of commitment to the organization. They also propose their operationalization of Becker’s [
47] approach and call it a lengthy, instrumental commitment. The authors conceptualized affective and instrumental commitment as two independent dimensions, that is, types of commitment to the organization. They emphasize that these two forms of commitment are independent. That is, the level at which it is affectively attached does not determine the degree to which it is instrumentally committed, and vice versa. Drawing on the results of their 1987 research, in a 1990 article, they present a three-dimensional model of commitment, as well as scales for measuring it. In addition to affective and instrumental commitment, they also define normative commitment. The validity of a three-dimensional model of commitment to an organization has been tested in many studies [
48,
49,
50,
51]. Some theorists argue that affective and normative commitment are mutually positive and independent of instrumental commitment. Criticism has also emerged in this model, on the emergence of overlapping normative and affective dimensions, as well as the multidimensionality of the instrumental model [
52,
53]. Some authors claim that it is necessary to "refine the construct" and adequately define it as a one-dimensional psychological state or connection, regardless of the purpose or purpose of the commitment. Commitment is more than just a passive stay, and it is a willingness for an individual to commit to and take responsibility for the organization [
54]. The one-dimensional commitment model is positively and highly associated with an affective, moderately with a normative, commitment, while not being significantly associated with instrumental commitment from the Meyer and Allen model.
According to Kehoe et al. [
55], more unambiguous and non-conflicting the expectations and demands of the role are, the more affective the employees will be. When it comes to the antecedents of instrumental commitment to the organization, there is far less research than there is about affective commitment, because the affective dimension is the essence, the essence of commitment to the organization. Satisfaction is a pleasant or positive emotional state resulting from a job evaluation or job experience. It arises as a result of the employee’s perception that the job they are performing has the ability to fulfill his essential business values and to enable those values to be aligned with their own needs [
56]. Job satisfaction can also be understood as the degree of alignment between what an organization requires from employees and what it provides them with, on the one hand, and what employees expect from an organization, on the other. Job satisfaction is influenced by several factors: working conditions, salary, working atmosphere, interpersonal relationships, quality of communication, personal compliance, etc. [
57,
58] The findings so far suggest that overall job satisfaction is closer to intrinsic motivation, professional interests and expectations, and a more general relationship to job type [
59,
60,
61,
62]. Emphasis is placed on actively managing their potential, and in the context of advancing the use of human factors, various schemes are being developed to increase motivation to work [
63,
64,
65,
66,
67]. Satisfaction affects productivity on some other phenomena such as organizational commitment [
68,
69,
70,
71]. Very interesting structural model of organizational commitment that assumed that there was a link between job involvement, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, developed by Kuruuzum [
72]. In recent studies, Khan and Nemati [
73] and Yeh [
74] are unequivocal in their claim that job involvement has a significant positive impact on job satisfaction. Within the model, job involvement is linked to organizational commitment, which in turn affects job satisfaction [
75]. Three dimensions of organizational commitment were highlighted by Meier and Allen [
76] while Robbins and Judge [
77] argued that they define each dimension starting with affective commitment (the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular organization and its goals and desires to retain organizational membership), specifically, employees stay in their workplace because they want to. It must be emphasized that commitment to leadership and the organization itself are interactive: commitment to the organization often results from a commitment to leadership, while commitment to leadership can be a consequence of commitment to the organization [
78,
79]. As with most psychological constructs, there are many different definitions of commitment. According to Sheldon commitment to an organization can be viewed as an attitude or orientation towards an organization that connects or binds an individual’s identity to the organization. Organizational commitment was addressed by Meyer and Allen [
80] who formed the three-factor scale of organizational commitment and argued that organizational commitment influences employees’ decision to remain in an organization. They emphasized affective (emotional), continuous (willingness to remain in the organization) and normative commitment (obligatory commitment to the organization) [
81]. Some authors used commitment measures operationalized through different approaches in their meta-analytic study [
82]. The authors divided the predictors of commitment into five groups, where the first refers to employees’ personal characteristics (gender, work experience, values, and so on), which will not be shown in this section of the text, while the other four groups relate to job characteristics, relationships between leader and group, organization characteristics and role status. Seven categories of lateral roles were investigated by Powell and Meyer [
83], and in their research contributed to Becker’s conceptual model of attachment. In their research, they came to the conclusion that all seven categories of lateral roles are associated with organizational commitment and a constant need for sacrifice. In tourism, the role of women is often extended to their domestic responsibilities and there is little compromise on life-choice issues. Some theorists see the value, in terms of conscious managerial practice, of claiming that employers are harnessing the social and domestic skills that women acquire through gender role socialization and employing women for jobs that include cleaning, serving and caring for children [
84]. There are studies that make it clear that the relationship and position at work is closely related to those of family. Many authors have dealt with this current topic, which is given in
Table 1.
The research entitled "Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment and Involvement in Work: The Mediating Role of Involvement in Work", presented a survey conducted among 566 respondents in Serbia, where the authors concluded that employees are mainly affected by work habits, as well as organizational policies and procedures do. do not significantly affect employee satisfaction [
85]. Transformational leadership cannot give significant impact to work performance [
86]. The research was performed in Indonesia.
Sexual segregation has been shown to be prone to locating women in areas that are considered less qualified and therefore less valuable to the economy [
87]. The starting hypotheses of the research were set as:
Hypothesis 1 (H1). There is a strong correlation between satisfaction factors and types of organizational commitment among women employees in tourism enterprises.
Hypothesis 2 (H2). There is a visible difference between the types of organizational commitment among female respondents employed in tourism enterprises.