Black Women in Tourism: challenges faced by members of Collective Bitonga Travel

Abstract

Bitonga Travel collective, created in São Paulo in 2018, seeks to strengthen the protagonism of black women in tourism as well as encourage and help them through a support network and experience exchange. This initiative occurs because the woman, as a tourist figure, has been represented as a white person, whilst the black person is seen as a worker who acts backstage or as inferior labor. This article intends to understand the challenges faced by the black women of the collective Bitonga Travel as tourists and the discussions about racism and gender become important. A qualitative research was conducted with the application of questionnaires on 35 women and the conducting of semi-structured interviews with 03 women out of the 116 black women participants of Bitonga Travel. It was possible to trace a profile of these women and to notice that racism, male chauvinism and sexism are problems present on these travelers´ reports. Hence, it is extremely importat to think about a more inclusive tourism activity which promotes strategies to face racism, male chauvinism and sexism.

Keywords
Black Women; Women Collective; Racism in Tourism; Gender and Tourism