Empowering Women Through Sustainable Tourism Enterprises: A Case Study of Homestay Networks in Rural Java
Keywords:
women's empowerment, homestay tourism, rural Java, gender and tourism, tourism entrepreneurship, sustainable livelihoods, IndonesiaAbstract
The expansion of homestay-based tourism across rural Java since 2022 has produced new entrepreneurial opportunities for women, but the empowerment outcomes of these opportunities remain empirically uneven and conceptually under-specified. While the policy discourse frames homestay enterprises as engines of women's empowerment, the conditions under which homestay participation translates economic activity into substantive empowerment — and the conditions under which it produces additional unpaid labour, household tension, or exclusion of women without prior asset bases — have not been systematically examined across multiple Java contexts. This study aims to assess women's empowerment outcomes from sustainable tourism homestay participation in three rural Java districts (Magelang in Central Java, Bantul in Yogyakarta Special Region, and Banyuwangi in East Java), and to identify the structural and institutional conditions that distinguish empowerment-generating from empowerment-limiting configurations. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design integrated 168 household surveys with 36 in-depth interviews and six focus group discussions with women homestay operators, conducted between January and February 2026. Empowerment was assessed across five dimensions — economic, decision-making, mobility, knowledge, and collective — using a context-calibrated index. Findings reveal substantial inter-district heterogeneity, with Bantul recording the highest mean empowerment score (0.71), Banyuwangi an intermediate score (0.62), and Magelang the lowest (0.54). Three structural variables — cooperative versus solo enterprise structure, prior asset endowment, and household labour-sharing arrangements — explain most of the variance. The study introduces the Empowerment-Conducive Tourism Configuration (ECTC) framework and offers policy implications for advancing SDGs 5, 8, and 10.
Keywords: women's empowerment; homestay tourism; rural Java; gender and tourism; tourism entrepreneurship; sustainable livelihoods; Indonesia
References
Antara, M., Sumarniasih, M. S., & Wirawan, P. E. (2023). Village tourism and community well-being in Indonesia: A multi-region assessment. Tourism Management Perspectives, 47, 101129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2023.101129
Boley, B. B., Strzelecka, M., & Yeager, E. P. (2023). Empowerment and tourism: A meta-synthesis. Annals of Tourism Research, 99, 103530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103530
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. SAGE.
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2023). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (4th ed.). SAGE.
Greco, S., Ishizaka, A., Tasiou, M., & Torrisi, G. (2024). Robustness analysis for composite indicators: Recent advances. Social Indicators Research, 171(1), 153–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03212-8
Kabeer, N. (2024). Re-imagining empowerment: Reflections on three decades of measurement debates. Feminist Economics, 30(2), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2024.2305571
Kemenparekraf. (2024). Statistik desa wisata Indonesia 2024. Kementerian Pariwisata dan Ekonomi Kreatif Republik Indonesia.
Lasso, A. H., & Dahles, H. (2023). A community perspective on local ecotourism development: Lessons from Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Tourism Geographies, 25(2–3), 537–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2021.1953123
Lestari, R., Permana, A., & Wijayanti, T. (2024). Sustainable tourism livelihoods in Indonesian fishing communities: A capabilities approach. Marine Policy, 162, 106113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106113
Movono, A., & Hughes, E. (2022). Tourism partnerships: Localizing the SDG agenda in Fiji. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 30(10), 2319–2336. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1811291
Mustika, P. L. K., & Vijayasoorya, P. (2024). Whose ecotourism? Reassessing community benefits in Indonesia's marine destinations. Marine Policy, 162, 106096. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106096
OECD. (2023). Sustainable tourism indicators: Updated framework and applications. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/sustainable-tourism-2023
Pratiwi, R. R., Manaf, A., & Pamungkas, A. (2022). Community-based tourism in Indonesia: Conceptual framework and empirical evidence. Sustainability, 14(18), 11321. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811321
Pritchard, A. (2023). Gender and feminism in tourism research: A reflection. Tourism Management, 99, 104796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2023.104796
Roy, S., & Acharya, A. (2024). Pragmatism in sustainability research: A methodological appraisal. Sustainability Science, 19(2), 421–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01432-y
Scheyvens, R., & Hughes, E. (2023). Tourism's contribution to the SDGs: Putting empowerment back in. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 31(2), 273–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2022.2032099
Stahl, N. A., & King, J. R. (2023). Expanding approaches for trustworthiness in qualitative research. Journal of Developmental Education, 46(1), 26–28.
Tucker, H., & Boonabaana, B. (2024). Gendered tourism work: A critical synthesis of the rural Global South literature. Tourism Management Perspectives, 50, 101201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2024.101201
UN Tourism. (2024). Global report on women in tourism: Third edition. UN Tourism. https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284425013
Wirawan, P. E. (2023). Tourism village development in Indonesia: A systematic review of community participation studies. Tourism and Hospitality Management, 29(2), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.20867/thm.29.2.5
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 HARMONI: Journal of Sustainable & Responsible Tourism
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
