Over the course of this school year, the Portimão School of Hotel and Tourism has developed a project to make the school community aware of the importance of employability among women in the tourism sector. This project culminated in a lecture at the University of Algarve.
"This integrative project had as its main premises to recognize and value the importance of women in the tourism sector, to contribute to improve gender diversity at work, raise awareness for equal opportunities for leadership, prevent inequalities / forms of discrimination, promote empowerment of women and appeal for gender equality», explains the EHT of Portimão.
The activities promoted were developed within the scope of the subjects of Portuguese, Mathematics and subjects in the area of tourism, with the participation of students from the 1st and 2nd years of the Cooking and Pastry Technician e Restaurant Bar Technician.
In a first phase, and as a starting point for the project, a questionnaire was created on the subject, which was sent to some hotels located in the geographical intervention area of EHT Portimão, for data collection.
The main objective of this small study was to collect the percentages of female workers in each sector of the hotel industry, the main professional skills associated with women and their most notorious difficulties.
Although the sample was very small, as many hotel units were closed due to the pandemic situation, «it was found that there is some disparity in numbers in different sectors, especially in the leadership areas».
During the second semester, a webinar, in which the guest speaker was Patrícia Correia, general director of Monte Santo Resort, trainer of EHT Portimão and regional delegate of ADHP.
In this session, the guest shared several moments of her professional career, addressed some of the difficulties she felt during it, presented strategies to overcome adversity and also shared with those present some of her achievements and some of the most important values to get revenge in the world of hospitality and tourism.
As a result of this set of activities, a campaign was developed for EHT Portimão's social networks, which aimed to inspire and sensitize the community to this theme and to the possible professional opportunities that a student of the courses at this institution may embrace after completing their formation.
Due to this campaign, at the invitation of Joaquim Pinto Contreiras, professor and deputy director of the Master's Course in Human Resources Management at the University of Algarve, professor Ana Ruas and trainer Daniela Silvestre, who is also a former student at EHT Portimão, promoted , on the 18th, a lecture at UAlg for the 1st year students of that master's.
“All over the world there is a need to fight the consequences of prejudices associated with gender inequality. Consequently, the theme has been addressed everywhere, in the most varied ways, in order to alleviate the consequences of this issue. Given its importance, Turismo de Portugal considered that this issue should be addressed from an early age in its network of schools. At the Portimão School of Hospitality and Tourism, we intend to continue the project in the coming school years with more webinars with influential speakers, cycles of conversations / gatherings, visits to enterprises led by women, etc.», concludes Ana Ruas, mentor of the Pedagogical Project at EHT Portimão and focal point of this integrative project.
Applications to the Portimão School of Hotel and Tourism are open until the 20th of July and can be done here.
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