Feminist Scholarship

Feminist scholarships are defined as sets of ideas for academic and intellectual orientation and interest towards women (Ngwainmbi, 2004). In general, women issues and problems are from oppressive, exclusionary, and discriminatory practices built into societal institutions. It is the knowledge where women issues and problems are identified through study, investigate and observe for those who are specialized and interest in this specific field. These scholar objectives are to produce knowledge contribution to women and also this knowledge is the bridge to find solutions to support women issues and problems. Hence, feminist scholarship is a framework that provides a platform for intellectual and academic for feminism studies. Henderson’s (1994b)

This phase in framework was revealed in the early 1970s and 1980s, women are considered as non-existence. Men’s experiences and perspectives are regarded as universal and women were not acknowledged. Generally in any social research at that time, the platform of thoughts claimed that research work was predominantly “gender blind” (Warner-Smith, 2000). Women’s experiences were overlooked and leisure behaviour were only conducted using predominantly male participant (Deem, 1986; Little, 1997). As a result, the evidence can be seen in early work of Plog’s (1984; cited in Ross, 1994; p.35) on the psychographic characterization of tourists where “masculinity” is one of the types of personality dimensions that made up the

This phase in the framework was revealed in the late 70s and 80s where women in tourism have appeared and added to the discourse of tourism. Women as a topic in travel and tourism have emerged. Research remains predominantly male-defined but their perspectives considered related to men. Stanley and Wise (1983) have referred the process as ‘filling in the gap’ where it is necessary to include women into research areas from ‘neglected dimensions’.

The first article specifically on women in tourism where consideration of women perspectives only relative to males through Smith’s (1979) paper, entitled ‘Women: The Taste Makers in Tourism’. A study showed that the dominance of women as decision makers was recommended through marketing channels where women see or read. At later part, women will gain social approval to their husbands, partners or families. Bartos (1973) paper “Working Women: The Invisible Consumer Market” have found that:

Working women represent virtually untapped potential travel market and through a review of travel advertising stated that advertisers in all categories airlines, car rentals, hotels/motels – virtually ignore the working