bananas, beaches, and bases

BANANAS, BEACHES AND BASES

been trying to build new international elliances, especially to end men,sexclusive right to vote in national elections and to end rie exploitaúonof women as mothers and as prostitutes by national and imperial armies.Some of those efforts made international élites nervous. occasionally, tleywittingly or unwittingly entrenched gendered hierarchies of internationalpower- They elevated motherhood to a political status; they made femininerespectability a crirerion for political legitimacy; rhey proposed that whitewomen should be the political mentors of women of color. An internationalfeminisr alliance, as we will see, do€sn't autonatically weaken male-runimperialist ventures. In the late 1980s rhere are fresh understand.ings,therefore, of the ways in which international ferrinist theorizing andorganizing has to be rooted in clear explanations of how women fromdiffelent, often unequal societies, are used to sustain the world patternsthat feminists seek to change. !Øomen organizing to challenge uñ agen-cies, the International Monetary Fund or multinational corporations aredeveloping theory and strategies simultaneously. A feminist internationalcampaign lacking a feminist analysis of international politics is likely tosubvert its own ultimate goals. Among the sectors - .subsystems,

- of theworld political system that a¡e being most affected by internation¡rizedfeminist organizing today are prostitution; population politics; develop-ment assistance; military qlli¡¡çs5; textile and electronics production.

It takes a lot of information-gathering, a rot of thinking, a lot of trial anderror and a lot of emotionally draining work to understand how notionsabout femininity and masculinity create and sustain global inequalities andoppressions in fust one of tlese sectors. yet a truly effective internationalfeminism requires us to make sense of how patriarchal ideas and practiceslink all of these sectors to each orher - and to other relationshiis whosegendered dynamiçs we have scarcely begUn to fathom.

Thus this book is only a beginning. It draws on rhe theoreticar andorganizational work of women in lg90s Britain, 1950s Algeria, l9g0sPhilippines. Most of the conclusions are rentative. what reaãers w¡ite inthe margins of these pages as they test the descrþtions and explanationsagainst thei¡ own experiences of internation¡rized femininity and mascu-linity will be at least as important in creating a different world as whatappears here in deceptively solid print.

2

1918

On Tun BnAcH:

SnxISM Attu ToURISM

The Pomrguese woman perched on the ladde¡ seems to be enioying her

work. Iflea¡ing a colorful dress under several layers of aprons, she is nottoo busy picking olives to smile at the photographer-

Selecting postcards is one of those seemingly innocent acts that has

become fraught with ideological risks. Imagine for a minute that you are

a British riloman travelling in Pornrgal. You have saved for this holiday

and a¡e thoroughly enjoying the time away from stress and d¡izzle. Butyou haven't left your feminist consciousness at home. You think about

the lives of the Portuguese 1a¡omen you see. That is one of the reasons

you search the postcard racks to find pictures of Pomrguese women

engaged in relatively ordinary occupations - weaving, making pottery'pu[ing in heavy fishing nets, hoeing ûelds or harvesting olives. These

are the images of Pornrguese women you want to send your friends

back home.Still, you are a bit uneasy when you realize that in the eyes of

those PornrgUese women you are probably iust another northern tour-ist able to afford leisurely travel outside her own country- They know

you don't se¿¡ch for those less picturesque but no less real images

of PortugUese women's lives today: women working in the new plastics

factories around Porto, marking Portugal's entrance into the European

Common Market; women working as chambermaids in hotels, repre-

senting the country's dependence on tourism. Such pictures wouldn'tmesh with the holiday image you wanr ro share with friends back indamp, chilly Britain.

No matter how good the feminist tourist's intention, the relation-

ship between the British woman on holiday and the working \Pomen

of Portugal seems to fall short of international sisterhood. But is it


exploitation? As uncomfortable as we are when we look at womensmiling out from foreign ¡rostcards, we might pause before leaping tothe conclusion that they are merely one more group of victims under theheel of international capital. I7omen in many countries are being drawninto unequal relationships with each other as a result of governments'sponsorship of the international tourist industry, some because they haveno choice, but others because they are making their own decisions abouthow to improve their lives. Many women are playing active roles inexpanding and shaping the tourist indusuy - as travel agents, travelwriters, flight attendants, craftswomen, chambermaids - even if theydon't conuol it.

Similarly, women who travel ¿ue not merely creatures of privilege; nortoday are they only from Vestern societies. They - or their motïers- have often had to ñght against confning presunption5 sf fsmininerespectability to travel away from home on their own.

The hushed and serious tones typically reserved for discussions ofnuclear escalation or spiraling international debt are rarely used indiscussions of tourism. Tourism doesn't fit neatly into public preoccu-pations with military conflict and high finance. Although it is infusedwith masculine ideas about adventure, pleasure and the exotic, those aredeemed 'private' and thus kept off stage in debates about internationalpoliúcs. Yet since World Var II, planners, invesrors and workers inthe tourist industry, and tourists themselves, have been weaving unequalpatterns that a¡e restructuring international politics. And they depend onwomen for thei¡ success.

By the mid-1980s, the global tourism business employed more peoplethan the oil industry. These employees were servici.g an estimated 200millio¡ people who each year pack their bags and pocket their Berlitzphrase books to become international tourists.r The numbers continue rorise steadily. The United Nations Vorld Tourism Organization forecasrsthat by the year 2(XX), tourism will have become the single nost importantglobal economic activity.z

The British woman's dilemna in trying to find a postcard expressingsisterhood rather than exploitation suggests that the galloping touristindustry is not necessarily making the world a more equal or harmoniousplace. Charter flight3, tine-share beach condominirrmsr and Himalayantrekking parties each carry with them power as well as pleasure. Vhiletou¡ism's supporters cite increased governmeDt tevenues and modern-izing influences, its critics ask whether tourism's remarkable growthis nanowing s¡ widsning the gap between the affiuent and the poor.They question whether the foreign clurency, new airsuips and hotelsthat come with the tourist industry really are adequate compensations

20

ON THE BEACH: SEXISM AND TOURISM

for the exacerbation of racial tensions and other problems that so often

accompany tourism.3

FOOT-LOOSE AND GENDERED

Tourism has its own political history, reaching back to the Roman empire.

lt overlaps with otherpleasure. Governmentscientific explorations,enced them differentlytourism industry and the international political system it sustains.

In many societies treing feminine has been defined as sticking close to

home. Masculinity, by contrast, has been the passport for uavel. Feminist

A woman who travels away from the ideological protection of 'home'

and without the protection of an acceptable male escort is likely to be

tarred with the brush of 'unrespectability'. She risks lssing her honor or

being blamed for any harm that befalls her on her travels. One need only

think of the lack of sympathy accorded a woman who has been assar¡lted

when trying to hitchhike on her own: 'Vhat does she expect' after all?'

Some women may unwittingly reinforce the patriarchal link between

By contrast a man is deemed less than manly until he breaks away from

home and strikes out on his own. Some men leave the fa¡m and travel to

the ciry s¡ mining town looking for work. Other men set off hitchhiking

with only a knapsack and a good pair of boots. Still others answer the

call to 'Join the Navy and see the world'..I cut off my hair and d¡essed me in a suit of my husband's having had the

precaution to quilt the waistcoat to preserve my breasts from hurt which

were nor large enough to betray my sex and puning on the wig and hat Ihad prepared I went out and brought me a silver hilted sword and some

Holland shirts.'4 So Christian Davies set off in the 1690s to enlist in the

British army. If she couldn't t¡avel as a worlan, she would disguise herseffi

as a man. The stories of Ch¡istian and women like her a¡e not r¡nmixed tales

of feminist rebellion, however. While some of the women ran away to sea or

enlisted as drummer boys to escape suffocating village life, others claimed

they were simply acting as a loyal wife or sweetheart, following their man.

21


If a woman was exposed - while being treated for a battle wound or givingbirth - the punishment she received frequently depended on which of thesetwo interpretations was believed by the men who pulled away her disguise.

Vita Sackville-West came from a privileged background but she emulatedher working-class sisters and resorted to male disguise. Afte¡ World \Øar Idemobilized veterans were a common sight in Europe. In 1920 Vita dressedas a man and ran away to Paris impulsively with her woman lover. In thismasculine camou-flage she felt liberated:

the evenings were ours. I have never told a soul of what I did. Ihesitate to write it here, but I must. . .I dressed as a boy. It waseasy, because I could put a khaki bandage round my head, whichin those days was so common that it attracted no attention at all. Ibrowned rny face and hands. It must have been successful, becauseno one looked at me at all curiously or suspiciously. . .I looked like a

rather untidy young man, a sort ofundergraduate, ofabout nineteen.I shail never forget the evenings when we walked back slowly to ourflat through the streets of Paris. I, personally, had never felt so freein my life.s

More recently, women have been lured into joining the military -without a disguise - by thoughts of leaving home. Getting away frornhome, not killing Russians or Vietnamese, is what Peggy Perri, just outof nursing school, had in mind when she and trer best friend decided toenlist in the IJS Army nursing corps n 1967.'Pat and I were both livingat home and we were both miserable. I was living at my mother's house. Iwas unhappy, really unhappy,' PeBBy recalls. 'Pat and I had become nurses*'ith the expectation that we could go anywhere and work. We wanted togo somewhere, and we wanted to do something really different.' Peggywasn't a classic 'good girl'. She chewed gum and liked parties. But shedidn't want to su¡render her status as a respectable young woman. 'Weneeded to know that the¡e was going to be some kind of stmcture to holdus up. T'he military sure promised that. . .I was infatuated by the idea ofgoing to Vietnam. . .I really didn't know where I wanted to go. I wanredto go ever''\r-here in the wo¡ld.' She soon got her wish. 'I remember we gotour orders; my mother took me shopping in every maior department store.Pat and I both bought new sets of luggage, Pat's was hot pink!. . .It wasjanuary and we would go to all the "cruise" shops looking for light-weightclothing. I wanted everyone to think I was going on a cruise.'6

The most famous of the women who set out to travel fu¡ther tïanconvention allowed without disguise are now referred to as the 'Victorianlady travellers'. Most of them came from the white middle classes of North

ON THE BEACH: SEXISM AND TOUBISM

America and Europe. They set out upon travels that were supposed to bethe preserve of men. They defied the strictu¡es of femininity by choosingparts of the world which whites in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury considered 'uncharted', 'uncivilized'. Not for them the chictourist meccas of Italy and Greece. These Victorian lady travellers wantedadoenture. That meant going to lands just being opened up by imperialarmies and capitalist traders.

In their own day these women were viewed with suspicion because theyda¡ed to travel such long distances with'so little proper male protection.Even if thei¡ husbands accompanied them as missionaries or scientists,these women insisted upon the separateness of their own experiences.The fact that most of them were white and chose to travel in continentswhose populations were not) added to the 'exotic' aura surrounding theirjourneys. Space and race, when combined, have different implications forwomen and men, even of the same social class.T

Mary Kingsley, Isabella Bird, Alexandra David-Neel, Nina Mazuchelli,Annie Bullock Workman, Nina Benson Hubba¡d - these wornen inthe nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took fo¡ themselves theidenti¡ies of 'adventurer' and 'explorer'. Both labels were thoroughlymasculinized. Masculinity and exploration had been as tightly 'rvoventogether as masculinity and soldiering. These audacious women chal-lenged that ideological assumption, but they have left us with a bun-dle of contradictions. While they defied, apparently self-consciously,the ban on far-flung travel by 'respectable' women, in some respectsthey seem quite conventional. Some of them rejected female suffrage"Some refused to acknowledge fully how far their own insistence on theright to adventure undermined not only Victorian notions of fernininity,but the bond being forged between 'Western masculinity and !üesternimperialism.

Mary Kingsley is one of the most intriguing lady travellers. Mary'sfathe¡ was an explorer, her brother an advenrurer. Mary was born in1862 and grew up as the twin movements of women's domestication oflvomen and imperial expansion were flowering in Victoria's England. She

seemed destined to nurse her invalid mother and to keep the homefuesburning for her globe-trotting brother. But Mary had other ideas. In 1892

she set out on the fust of several expeditions to Africa. She traveledwithout male escort and headed for the West African interior. For itwas in the continent's interior where 'real' adventures were thought tohappen. In subsequent years she befriended European male traders plyingtheir business along the coasts and up the rivers of Africa. Her detailedknowledge of African societies' ritual fetishes was even acknowledged bythe men of the British Museum.8

2322


Mary Kingsley also became one of the most popular speakers on thelively lecture circuit. She drew enthusiastic audiences from all overEngland to he¿r about her travels to Africa and her descriptions oflives lived in the newly penetrated areas of victoria's empire. Manywomen travellers helped fnance their travels by grving public lectures.The lecture circuit may have provided a crucial seaing in which the womenwho stayed ar home could become engaged in the British empire. Theycould take part vicariously in British officials' debates over how best toincorporate African and Asian peoples into that empire by listening toMary Kingsley describe colonial policies and their consequences for localpeoples.

The women lecture-goers are as politically interesting as Mary Kingsleyherself. Together, lectu¡er and audience helped to fashion a British cul-ture of imperialism. The stay-at-home listeners would develop a senseof imperial pride as they heard another worrran describe her travelsamong their empire's more 'exotic' peoples. And they could expand theirknowledge of the world without risking loss of that feminine respecabilitywhich enabled them to feel superior to colonized women. Their inperialcuriosity, iù rurn, helped Mary Kingsley finance her breaking of genderedconvention.

A century later librarians at the American Museum of Natu¡al Historyin New York mounted an exhibition honoring some of the Americanwomen who had made contributions to scientiûc exploration. 'Ladiesof the Field: The Museum's Unsung Explorers' was designed to makevisible Delia Akeley, Dina Brodsky and other women explorers whosecontributions to science had been neglected because they were dismissedas âmateurs or as mere wives+f-explorers. The exhibition consisted of iustth¡ee small glass cases in the ante-room of the Ra¡e Book Library. As twowomen visitors peered through the glass ro read faded diaries and leners,they could he¿¡ the shouts of schoolchildren racing through millennia ofdinosaurs not far away. But here there were no curious crowds. Theywere the only visitors. something about fin¡ring themselves before thismodest exhibit prompted the strangers to exchange a few words. As theylooked at a phoro of Delia Akeley standing proudly berween giant tusksshe had just collected for the museum, one wouran said, 'A friend ofmine had wanted to be an explorer, but she resigned herserf to being aübrarian.'

some of these contributors to the museun were the first white womento travel to a particular region. That seemed to give their travels gre¡rtersignificance. Historians often think it worth noting when the 'f¡si whiteworlâr/ arrived, as if hat profoundly uansformed a place. A whitewoman's arrival destined it to be sucked into the international system.


2 Delia Akeley Museum ofNanralHistoryþhoto: tory,NewYork)

If a white woman traveler reached such a place, could the white wife orwhite tourist be far behind?e

FEMININITY IN A WORLD OF PROGRESS

The idea that the world is out there for the taking by ordinary citizens as

well as adventurers emerged alongSide the growth of tourism as an indus-

try. Vorld's fairs, together with museums and uavel lectures, nourished

this idea.Vithout leaving her own country' the fair-goer could experience

remote corners of the world, choosing to 'visit' the Philippines, Alaska,

Japan or Hawaü. It is estimated that in the United States alone, close to

2524


one million people visited world's fairs between 1876 and 1916.10 Vorld,sfairs were designed to be more rhan pnpular entert¡rinments; thèy wereintended by their planners to heþ the public imagine an indusuiarizing,colonizing global enterprise.

At the hub of all the world's fairs was the idea of progress, global progress. It cor¡ld be best celebrated, fair investors believed, bygraphic¿lly comparing 'uncivilized' with 'civilizecl' cultu¡es. Between thetwo extremes fair designers placed Afro'American and Native Americ¿ncultures - those apparently already on the track to civilization. TheycoDstructd elaborate scenes that they irnagined visitors would fndexotic. They imported women and men from as far away as Samoaand the Philippines to demonsrrate their point. They called on thebudding profession of anthropology to order their ideas a¡d ensureauthenticity. In the end fair designers created living postcards, crich6of cultures apparently at opposite ends of the modernity scale.

The natives in ùeirexotic environmentwere as cmcial to the celebrationof progress as were exhibits of the latest feats of technological invention.Valking berween a simple Samoan village and a powerfrrl, shiny locomotive gave fair-goers an exhilarating sense of ineviable progress. By impli-cation, it was America - or France or Britain - which was leading the wayin the march of globalized progress. For the cultures most deeply affiectedby the colonial e¡perienEventually, so the fairworld would be led into the light of civilization by imperial trusteeship.The world's fair expressed an êlaborate international political cosmorogy.

It was a gendered Anerica, a gendered Britein, however, that wasleading the procèssion and formutating the heartening comparisons. ArelÐrter for the onoluBee captured this spirit when describing the l89gTrans-Mississippi and International Exposition:

To see these ever formidable and hereditary enemies of the whitem¡n encamped together in a frame of architectural splendor erectedby courage, m¡nhoffl, and sterling integrity, will impress upon thegrowing sons and daughters a lesson which will bear fruit in yearshence when the yet unsettled and uncultured ¡rossessions of theUnited States shall have become iewels upon the Star SpangledBanner.rl

The year was 1898. The US government w¿s s¡¡g¡.ting its imperialreach. Ame in defeating Span-ish, Cuban in the process thatindustrialization and the rise of urban middle-class lifestyles were nor,

26


es some had feared, weakening white American manhond. Vithin several

decades Americans would no longer have to be satisûed with feif exhibiSof Cuban dancers or Philippines villages. Those countries would have builttourist hotels, beach resorts and casinos to lure Anerican pleasure-seekers

- all due to world-wide progress generated by a civilizing sort of American

masculinity.The world's fairs of this era preached'hat white men's manliness fueled

the civilizing imperial mission and in turn, thåt pgrsrring the imperialmission revitalized the nation's masculihity. At the same time, world'sfai¡s were designed to show that women's domestication was proof of the

manly mission's worthiness.Thus femininity as well as masculinity structurd the comparisons and

the lessons visiton were to derive from the world's fai¡s. Vomen became

the viewers and the viewed. Vhite women were meant to come away fromthe fair feeling grateful for the beneûts of civilization they enioyed- Theywere not expected to measure progress from savagery to civiliz¿tion interms of veting rigbts or economic independence; they were to adopt ascde that had domesticated respectability et one end and hard manuallabor at the other. Vhite men were to look at 'savage' men's treatmentof their over-worked women and congratulate themselves on their own

civilized roles as protectors and breadwinners. Without the Samoan,

Filipino and other colonized women, neither male nor fe-ale fair-goers

would have been able to feel so confident about their own places in this

emergent world.Some Anerican women saw the world's fair as a perfect venue for

showing women's special contributions to the nation's progress- Amer-ica's Centennial Exhibition in 1876 featured a Women's Pavilion, whichcelebrated the new concept of domestic science, as well as ar'ts and crafts

by women from around the world. Progress, technolory and feminine

domestic space were combined in a revised version of gendered civiliza-tion. In 1893 there \ilas to be a great fair at Chicago to coûlmemorate thefour-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. Susan B.

Anthony, the suffragist, led a drive to ensure that women wouldn't be

excluded from the planning as they had been in 1876. The US Congress

responded by mandating the appointment of a Board of Lady Managers

to participate in the design of the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The Boardcommissioned a Women's Building. It was :rmong the fair's largest and

most impressive, designed by a woman architect, 23-yearold Sophia

Hayden. But the'Vomen's Building and its exhibits did not challenge

the underlying message of the fair. The white women who took charge

of this ambitious proiect still believed their mission was to demonstrate

2l


hy thatwaschaired bY

woman be

PACKAGE TOURS FOR THE RESPECTABLE WOMAN

Tourism is as much

ideas about industrialmanhood, education

Tourism has dePended on Pre

he can shed civilization'sof behavior imPosed bY

respectable women back home'--fiãÃ", cook pe,ha-p;ã;;" credit for makine

Hrî'1ilf,'-tå;*;had the idea of chartering a train

- ants could board a single u¡in' pay a

reduced rate, and wbile traveling ìo theif 66sting be ueated to''hans'

loaves and t"", irrt"..*p"-rrã *id."r,onations against tle evils of drink.

lome 570 people signed up for that ft orking menthat didn't

men to ioin his tour to the London

Exhibition:

the Exhibition andhe that does

not_theonewillbeblindwithhiseyesopen,andtheotherwillenjoythe sight, "td "¿ti"

Ot skill an tiabour of his fellow-workmen of

differént Parts of the globe'ró

Only later did Cook come to realizæ that package tou.rs might a$ract

*"iL¡i, ã*ãa *r.i, wives and children and eventually women trav-

eling withou, " or¿.-*L*Uti of the family By the 1850s Britain's


theY go?

28


Yol l.vll 'úúi- F-EBRUARYt 1eroz. oRATUtrotis copy


favored destinations are the shops and beaches of Hong Kong, Hawaü

and California.2o

THE TOURISM FORMULA FOR DEVELOPMENT

From its beginnings, tourism has been a powerful motor for global inte-gration. Even more than other forms of investnent' it has symbolizeda country's entrance into the world community. Foreig¡r-owned mines,

nilitary outposts and museum explorations have drawn previously 're-mote' societies into the international system, usually on unequal tetms.

Tourism entails a more politically F)tent kind of intimacy. For a touristisn't expected to be very adventurous or daring, to learn a foreigu language

or adapt to local custom. Making sense of the strange local currency isabout all that is demanded. Perhaps it is for this reason that internationaltechnocrats express such satisfaction when a government announces that itplans to promote tourism as oDe of its major industries. For such a policy

implies a willingness to meet the expectations of those foreigners who wantpolitical stability, safety and congeniality when they travel. A government

which decides to rely on money from tourism for its development is agovemment which has decided to be internationally compliant enough

that even a worran traveling on her own will be made to feel at home

there.When mass tourism began to overtake élite travel following World

Var II, most travel occurred within and between North Americ¿ and

Western Europe. By the mid-1970s, 8 per cent of all tourists were NorthAmericans and Europeans traveling on holiday to Third Vorld count¡ies.

A decade later 17 per cent were-21 Middle-class Canadians who a decade

ago thought of going across the border to Cape Cod or Florida in search ofholiday warmth are now as likely to head for the Bahamas. Thei¡ French

counterparts are as apt to make Tunisia or Morocco rather than Nice theirholiday destination. Scandinavians a¡e choosi.g Sri Lanka or Goa instead

of the Costa del Sol.

Third Vorld officials and their European, American and Japanesebankers have become avid tourism boosters. Tourism is promoted today

as an indusry that can turn poor countries' very poverty into a magnet

for sorely needed foreign crurency. For to be a poor society in the late

twentieth cennrry is to be 'uns¡roilt'. Tourism is being touted as an

alternative to the one-commodity dependency inherited from coloni¡lrule. Foreign sun-seekers replace bananas. Hiltons replace sugar mills-

Multinational corporations such as Gulf and Vestern or Castle and Cookconvert their large landholdings into resorts or sell them off to developers.

By the mid-1980s tourism had replaced suger as the Dominican Republic's

3130


top foreign-exchange earner. In Jamaica, tourism had outstripped bauxite

as the leading earner of foreign exchange. Caribbean development officials

are happily reporting that, with more than l0 million visitors a year'

the region is outstripp,ing its m¡in tourism rivals, Hawaü and Mexico.

But, they add reassuringly, all the new hotel construction isn't turningCaribbean islands into concrete iungles: 'Many of the islands are mainly

wild and underpop¡lated, with room for nurny more hotels and resorts

before their appeal is threatened.'22In reality, tou¡ism may be creating a new kind of dependency for

poor nations. Today tourism represents 40,000 iobs for Tunisia and is

the country's biggest foreign-currency earner. Cor¡ntries such as PuertoRico, Haiti, Nepal, Gambia and Mexico have put their development eggs

in the tourism basket, spending millions of dollars from public funds tobuild the sorts of facilities that foreign tourists demand. Officials in these

co¡ntries hope above all that tourism will get thei¡ countries out of debt.

The international politics of debt and the international pursuit of pleasure

have become tightly knotted together as we enter the 1990s-23

The indebted governments that have begun to rely on tourism include

those which previously were most dubious about this as a route to genu-

ine development, especially if 'development' is to include preservation

of national sovereignty. Cuba, Tanzania, North Korea, Viemam and

Nicaragua all are being governed today by officials who have adopted

a friendlier attitude toward tourism. They are being complimented and

called 'pragmatic' by mainst¡eam international observers because they

are putting the reduction of international debt and the earning of foreigucurrency on the top of their political agenda.2a

This belief in the logic of fueling development and economic growth

with tourism underlies the full-page color advertisements in the Sunday

supplements. Many of those ads hrring travelers to sunny beaches and

romantic ruins a¡e designed and paid for by government tourist offices.

Most of those bureaucratic agencies depend on femininity, masculinityand heterosexuality to make their appeals and achieve their goals. Localmen in police or military uniforms and local women in colorful peåsant

dresses - or in very little d¡ess at all - are the preferred inages' The localmen are militarized in their manliness; the loc¿l women are welcomingand available in their femininity. The Cayman Islands Department ofTourism ran an expensive advertisement in the Neu Ynk Tiræ¿s 'So'phisticated Traveller' supplement in October 1987. It pictured a whitecouple on an expanse of sandy beach. Underneath were smaller snap-

shots of local life and tourist activities - the tourists lvere portrayed

as white couples shopping, swinming' dining; the local people were

uniformed men on parade and a single black woman smiling out at

32


thereader.Overherheadranthecaptionr'Thosewhoknowus'loveus.t

FLIGHT ATTENDANTS AND CHAMBERMAIDS

Singapore Airlines, a govenlment company' runs a center-fold advertise-

ment that shows an A.i* *o* of somewhat vague ethniciry' She could

s rn a misty, impressionistic setting'a single water lilY' There is no

tY record, just this message in

ou're a great way to flY-'international business travelers a¡e

amendants in the United States

right not to d¡ess in uniforms

t ai¡borne Playboy bunnies' But most

women working today as flight attendants do not yet have th9 backing of

r"."g ""a.

uriorrr. ih;t aie subiect ¡9.their employers' desire for flight

aûendants ao ,.pr"r"oinot onty tie airline comPany that employs them'

but the fsminine .rr.o..-of tháir nation'-For that distinctive femininity

companies. It was theY who first

labor to maximize pri'i' while co leisure' Initially'

ocean-liner crews were male, r The white offrc-

ers were to exude both compe passengers' The

ioãoooi-, Filipino and otheì men of color serving in the dining rooms

the handful of British women who

Scotløtù in the 1930s, a tine whe

worked as stewardesses, rising

domestic tasks. To be a tourist me

33


Thus chambermaids, waitresses and cooks are as crucial to the interna-tional tourism industry - and the official hopes that underpin it - as sugar

workers and miners were to colonial industries. Still, a chambermaid seems

different. Even a low-paid, over-worked male employee on a banana or

sugar plantation has a machete, a sense of strength, a perception of his

work as manly. Many nationalist movements have rallied around the image

of the exploited male plantation worker; he has representd the denial ofnational sovereignty.

Nationalist leaders who have become alârmd at the tourism-dependentpolicies imposed by foreign bankers and their own governments have been

reluctant to rally around the symbol of the oppressed chambermaid. Menin nationalist movements may ûnd it easier to be roused to anger by the

vision of a machete-swingng man transformed into a tray-carrying waiterin a white resort - he is a man who has had his masculine pride stolen

froin him. Caribbeån nationalists have complained that their govetnment'spro-tourism policies have turned their society into a'nation of busboys'.

'Nation of chambermaids' doesn't seem to have the same mobilizing ring intheir ears. After all, a woman sþe þ5 traded work as an unpaid agriculturalworker for work as a hotel cleaner hasn't lost any of her femininity.

In reality, tourism is not dependent on busboys. Tourism is whateconomists call a 'labor-intensive' industry. It requires constructioncrews, airplanes, gallons of frozen oran e iuice, and above all a higlratio of employees to paying customers; people who come as touristsnecd and expect a lot of service. As in other labor-intensive indusuies

- garnents, heelth and childcare, food processing and electronics

assembly - owners make money and governments earn tex revenues

to the extent that they can keep down the cost of wages and ben-

eûts of the relatively large numbers of workers they must hire.Since the eighteenth centuq¡, employers have tried to minirnize the cost

of employing workers in labor-intensive industries by defning most iobsas 'unskilled' or 'low-skilled' - iobs, in other words, that workers naturallyknow how to do. Women in most societies are presumed to be naturallycapable at cleaning, washing, cooking, serving. Since tourism companiesneed precisely those jobs done, they can keep their labor costs low if theycan deûne those iobs as women's work. In the Caribbean in the early 1980s,

75 per cent of tourism workers were women.27

Hawaüans refer to the large hotels owned by Americans and Japanese as

'the new plantations': Cauc¿sian men are the hotel managers, Hawaüan men

and women the entertainers, Hawaüan men the coach d¡ivers and Filipinowomen the chambermaids. In China, post-Mao officials, eager to attrectforeign industry and foreign exchange, are approving the construction ofnew hotels within coastal zones set aside for electronics, textile and other

0N THE BEACH: SEXISM AND TOI,IRISM

export factories, and a¡e hetPing

Bamboo Garden Hotel emPloYs 3

In the PhiliPPines, where tourism

,.Ãflo rr", Uä ,.û.J o' to earn badly needed foreign exchange, the

ilfu" Garden Hotel employs 5ü) workers; 300 are women' But there

is something different here' Vorkers are

union, the Þhitippines National Union of

and Allied Industries, and equal number

'.p'.'.*".i"es.Inthewakeofthewidespreadpoliticalmobilizationof*ã-." that helped to bring down th Márcos regime in 1986' women

l" ,h. union cråated a Woiting Women's Council' Beth Valenzuela' a

rirgf.-"anrworkinginthehotel'sfooddepartment'isoneoftheManilacrïá."Hotel's""tiuJ*o-.r'unionists.riil.t._î.i.",:ïJrîili'å$i

d be studied and discussed' Itrers in public speaking and decision-

making, skills that in the past'have been iealously g¡rarded by the men

as thei¡ exclusive Preserve''z9-- l" g¡oi", t*, th" Conservative government has been trump€ung

,o*ir- as a-growth inaustry. rn re iate 1980s and early 19Ðs, tourist

;;;""il Ëreating 45,00rí new iobs per year, especially in the depressed

indusuial areas of the North' A new museum is opening every two weeks:

leserte¿ steel mills srs þecaming part of the 'heritage indusrry'' But

most tourism ioUs are part-time, seasonal and provide little chance for

.dn*".-.oa. This means that they a¡e also likely to be fiUed by women'

ñ-"ãr,l.ro., some British critics of the tourism fonnula for economic

revival seem less upset at the prospect of a British woman struggling on

" ;;*. wage than at the iåea oÌ a former sreel worker compromising

ni, or".c.rlioity by taking a 'candy-floss job' at a theme park'3o

SEX TOURISM IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

PatBongisaneighborhoodofBangkokthatcaterstoforeignmen.Thereare 400,(XX) more women than men living in Bangkok' but male tourists

outnumber female tou¡ists by three to one' Pat Bong's urban landscape

*"to ,tt. census ûgures come alive' Although ttre government passed a

Þiãr,i*,io' prohibíion Act in 1g60, six years later it undercut that ban

ty pasring an Entertainment Places Act, which had enough loopholes to

encourage coffee shoPs

Thus todaY Pat Bong is

thel19

35u


disgUised brothels and 394 disco-restau¡ants, all of which sold sexual

companionship to male customers. Some of the women who work here

as prostitutes have migrated from the countryside where agricultural

development proiects have left them on the margins; other women are

second, even third generation prostitutes increasingly cut off from the rest

of Thai society. A woman working in a Bangkok massage parlor cen earn

an average of 5,000 baht per month; wages in nontntertainment jobs open

to women average a paltry 8'f0 baht per month- Marriage to a foreigner

frequently appears to be the only avenue out ofPat Bong, but it too can

prove illusory:

[She] had lived with an English man working as a technician on an oilrig. But he left her and went back to England. She said she was notworking when she was with him, but returned to her iob after some

months since he failed to send her money and it was impossible forher to keep such an expensive flat- 'S7hat else can I do? After all,these men are good business.'3r

Sex tou¡ism is not an anomaly; it is one strand of the gendered togrism

industry. Vhile economists in industrialized societies presqme that the

'service economy', with its explosion of feminized iob categories, follows

a decline in manufacturing, policy-makers in many Third Vorld countries

have been encouraged by international advisers to develop service sectors

befne manufacturing indus6ies mature. Bar hostesses before automobile

workers, not after.32

A network of local and foreign companies encourages men - especially

from North America, Vestern Europe, Japan, the Middle East and Aus-

tralia - to travel to Third Vorld countries speciûcally to purchase ttre

sexual services of local women. The countries that have been developed

as the destinations for sex tourists include those which have served as (fest

and recreation' sites for the American military: Thailand, South Korea,

the Philippines. Nearby Indonesia and Sri Lanka also have received sex

tourists. Goa, a coastal state of India, is among the newest regions to

be targeted by sex tourism's promoters. I-ocal laws explicitly prohibitingprostitution are often ignored, not only by pimps and bar owners' but by

India's police and tourism officials as well.33

To succeed, sex tourism requires Third World women to be economi-

cally desperate enough to enter prostitution; having done so it is made

difficult to leave. The other side of the equation requires men from affiuent

societies to imagine cerrain women, ¡3u¡lly women of color, to be more

available and submissive than the women in their own countries. Finally,the industry depends s¡ an ¡llience between local governments in search

36


of foreign currency and local and foreign businessmen willing to invest in

sexuelized t¡avel.

Thailand is a world full of extremes and the possibilities are unlim-

In 1986 Thailand earned more foreign cufrency from tourism - $1.5

billion - than it did from any other economic activity including its

traditional export leader, rice. The Thai government's Sixth National

Economic and Social Development Plan for f97þ1991 makes 'tourism

and ex¡rorts' its top priority. In pursuing this goal Thai officials want to

increase the numbers of to¡rists (2.7 million came in 1986), but also to

alter the mix, especidly to get Japanese men, who now stay an average

between feminist organizations.By October

sharp drop inPattaya. Aftermale tourists.an extent that Pattaya's VD clinics, which advertise in A¡abic as well as

English, had begrrn to see a fall in clients. Initially, the Thai government

was reluctant to talk about AIDS. Like other governments dependent

on tourism and on sex tourism in particular, public admission of AIDS

was seen ¿s d¡maging to the economy and national pride. Then, once

acknowledged, officials set about compelling women working in bars and

massage parlors in Pattaya and Bangkok to take tests for the HIV virus-

Government health officials were pressed by government tourism officials

ro co-op€rare. By mid-1987 only six people, five Thais and one foreigner,

had died of AIDS according to official statistics. Most of the other

twenty-ûve people reported by the government as having been infected

with the virus and developing AlDS-related symptoms were categorized

by the govemment as homosexual men and drug addicts. Female prosti-

nrtes are the group that most worried Thai ofñcials. Bureaucrats began

37


talking of building nore golf courses. If foreign men began to avoid Thai

women there had to be an alternative attraction. But little was said of the

Ixnr women who have taken iobs in the sex industry because they have

had to leave the Thai countryside for lack of land and decently paid waged

work.36Em¡rower and Friends of Women are two of the Thai women's o¡ganiza-

tions formed in the 1980s to fill the gaps left by uninterested policy-makers

and investors. Each group works directly with women in the sex-tourism

industry, provirling English lessons so that the women can deal on a more

equal footing with their clients. They publish and distribute cartoon

brochures informing women about AIDS- Most recently they have

begun efforts to work with Thai women who have traveled to Europe

to work as entertainers or to rnarry as meil+rder brides-37

Feminist gxoups in the Philippines have had a better political opening

for making sex tourism a national political issue. The overth¡ow of the

authoritarian and exportoriented regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986

made the government's enti¡e development formula vulnerable to popular

scrutiny. Marcos and his advisors, with encouragement from foreign banks

and tecbnical consultants, had viewed tourism as a primary building block

of development. The regime had used the reputd beeuty and generosity ofFilipino women as 'natural resoufces' to compete in the international tou¡-

ism market. The result was that by the mid-1980s, 85 per cent of tourists

visiting the country were men, and sex tourism had become crucial to the

ffi'#o:,'oåffiåîïHAnerican bases in the Philippines, some Filipino feniniss notd that

there were many more women working as prostitutes in Manila's tou¡ist

establishments.Another eyening is starting in the history of the international political

system:

Rows of taxis, cars and minibuses pull up behind a number ofM¡nila hotels. Long lines of women pass the guards and enter aprivate door, sign a book, hand over their identiûcation cards and

take a private elevator to one of the special floors designated forprostitution. . .

The woman go€s to her assigned room; if the man is out she waits

in the corridor . . . tA prostitutel mây not be taken to eny publica¡ea of the hotel, all food and drink orders must be by room service-

Hotels charge a $10 'ioiners fee' for the privilege of taking a woman

toar(x)m...Before breakfast the next day the women collect their IDs and leave.3t

38


when corazon Aquino replaced Ferdinand Marcos as president, Fili-pino women activists pressed the new regime to give up sex tourism as a

äevelopment strategy. Aquino herself was not a feminist, but she had made

resroration of the nation's dignity a cenual theme in her political campaign.

As president, she took steps to change the Tourism Ministry's leadership

and policies. The new minis¡s¡ brought a tou¡ of Japanese women to the

Philippines in order to demonstrate that the governnent was making the

co¡Dtfy a more wholesome tourist destination. But when Aquino author-

ized police to make raids on esablishmentç in Ermita, Manila's infamous

entertainment district, feminists were alarmed. The policy was not devised

in consultation with women's gtoups such as Gabriela. Women working

in the indusUy were not asked about the causes or likeþ consequences ofzuch a heavy-handed approach. No steps were taken by the government

to provide alternative livelfüoods for the women working as dancers,

hostesses and masseurs. In the name of cleaning up the city, washing

away the degeneracy of the Marcos years, police arÍestd hund¡eds ofwomen. Virtually no pimps, businessmen or male clients were iailed-3e

Several Fitipino feminist gxoups have created dropin centers in those

a¡eas where prostitution is concentrated. They acknowledge that there

are class barriers to be overcome in these new relationships befween

women in prostitution and women in politicd organizations. Filipinowomen activists, including a number of feminist nuns, have tried to avoid

moralism. To provide a place to meet other prostitutes outside of the bars,

to allow women to sort out together the conditions that pull Filipinowomen into prostitution, to provide practical information on AIDS, VDand congaception - these are feminists' first obiectives. Yet the lack of the

substantial ¡esources it takes to offer prostitutes realistic iob alternatives

has been frustrating. Learning handicrafts may provide a wor¡¡n working

in Ermita or on the fringes of an American military base with a new se¡Se

of confidence or self-worth, but it doesn't pay the rent or support a child.

'When it comes to income-generating alternatives, we don't hink we offer

anything because we are up against so much. Economically we cfl¡¡ot give

them anything.'{Filipino feminists refuse to discuss prostitution or sex tourism in a

vacuum. They insist that all analyses and organizational strategies should

tie sex tourism to the issues of Philippines nationalism, land reform

and demilitarization. Nowadays, they ugue, sex tourism must also þg

understood in relation to Filipinas' migration oversees.

Migfation as entertainers and as brides to foreign men has been the

latest step in making world Uavel different for men then for women. Men

in Scandinavie, Vest fürmany, Australia, Britain, the United States and

Japan now want to have access to Third vorld women not iust in Third

s


Vorld tourism centers; they want to enjoy their services at home. Thusfeminist organizations in Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines are

having to make alliances with women in Europe, North America and

Japan in order to protect women in the international tourism/enter-tainment/marriage industry. Thai feminist social workers go to IlestGermany to investigate the conditions Thai women encounter there;Filipino feminists travel to Japan to take part in meetings organized by

Japanese feminists concerned about Filipinas recruited to work in discos

and bars, women now referred to as'iapayukisan'; South Korean feministsfly to New York to attend a conference on international prostitution to urgeAmerican women activists to think and organize internationally.al

CONCLUSION

Tourism is not just about escaping work and drizzle; it is about power,increasingly internationalized ¡rower. That tourism is not discussed as

seriously by conventional political corrmentators as oil or weaponry maytell us more about the ideological construction of 'seriousness' than aboutthe politics of tourism.

Government and corporate ofÊcials have come to depend on interna-tional travel for pleasure in several ways. First, over the last forty years

they have come to see tourism as an industry that can help diversify localeconomies suffering from reliance on one or two products for export.Tourism is embedded in the inequalities of international uade, but isoften tied to the politics ofparticular products such as sugar, bananas, tea

and copper. Second, ofÊcials have looked to tourism to provide them withforeign clurency, a necessity in the ever more globrlized economies of bothpoor and rich countries. Thfud, tourism development has been looked uponas a spur to more general social development; the'uickle down'of modernskills, new technology and improved public services is imagined to followin the wake of foreign tourists. Fourth, many govenìment officials have

used the expansion of tourism to secure the political loyalty of local élites.For instance: cêrtnin hotel licences may win a politician more strategicallies today than a mere civil-serrice appointment. Finally, many officialshave hoped that tourism would raise thei¡ nations' international visibility andeven prestige.

Many of these hopes have been dashed. Yet tourism continues to bepromoted by bankers and development planners as a means of makingthe international system less unequal, more ûnancially sound and morepolitically stable. A lot is riding on sun, surf and souvenirs.

From the Roman empire to the eighteenth century European grandtour, the rise of Cooks Tours and Club Med, travel for pleasure and

40

ON THE BEACH: SEXISM AND T0URISM

adventure has been profoundly gendered. vithout ideas abut masculinity

-¿ r.-i"i¡ry-and rhe enforcement of both-in the societies of depamrre

-¿ ,n. societies of destination, it would be impossible to sustain the

to*i.or industry and its political agenda in their crulent folm. It is not

rtptt that ideas about pleasure, travel, escape, bed-making and sexuality

havã affecte¿ women in rich and pc countries. The very strucn''e

of international tou¡ism neeìts patnarchy to survive' Men's capacity to

control women,s sense of their security and self-worth has been central

to the evolution of tourism politics. It is for this reason that actions by

i"-i¡.ar - as airline ,t"*"rã..t.t, hotel xrorkers, prostitutes, wives of

businessmen and organizers of alternative tours for women - should be

seen as political, internationally political'

Movements which upset any of the patterns in today's international tou¡-

ist industry are likely io ,tpr.t one of the principal pillars of coltem¡rorary

world power. Such "

,..lir.tioo forces one to take a second look at the

olives, smiling for the Postcardhaping the international political

41

bananas, beaches, and bases

Documents