Investigation of the Hindrances Faced by Women in Contributing Towards the Growth of Wildlife Tourism Industry in Buea, Southwest Region, Cameroon

Abstract

Wildlife tourism plays an important role in the Cameroonian economic growth, attracts investment, creates many job opportunities and enhances foreign currency entry into the market. The wildlife Tourism industry is witnessing a rapid investment growth to meet the demands of the tourists. Unfortunately, the long standing tradition of gender discrimination in Cameroon work-strength, especially in the tourism service sector might be a set-back. The reason which the execution of the study is a necessity, focused on exploring some of the set-backs women working in this industry are facing. The method used for data collection was based on the administration of two hundred and fifty questionnaires to a randomly selected population of women working in the wildlife tourism sector in Buea. The results has shown a significant link between office-boss gender and educational background (R² = 0.625,P<0.05). Inaddition, the results has shown a significant link between women challenges and the effect of family duties on their career development (χ²= 29.669 df=3, P<0.05). The assessment of women work-performance recorded a respondent score of 68.92% and 31.08% on Good and Fair respectively. Moreover, a respondent score of 74.90% and 25.10%  was  recorded on ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ respectively on the effects of family duties to women career development. Also, the results recorded a respondent score of 68.53%, 24.70% and 6.77% on ‘Good’, ‘Fair’, and ‘Poor’ respectively on the work-performance of women at the managerial positions. Moreso, the study witnessed a respondent score of 33.86%, 32.67%, 19.12%, and 14.34% on communication, hotel management, transportation, and department of tourism respectively on the female work-strength. The respondent score of 33.47%, 32.27%, 23.11% and 11.16% was recorded on promotion, maternity, harassment, and low category professional positions on women office-workers respectively as challenges. However, the increase involvement of women in wildlife tourism industry would likely solve some of these challenges, consequently a more rapid growth for the sector would emerge.

Keywords: Wildlife tourism, Gender discrimination, Hotel management, Communication, Transportation