With International Women’s Day celebrated on the weekend (March 8), G Adventures, is calling on travellers to rethink how they travel, with a list of simple actions that demonstrate how empowering women is something that can be weaved into holiday plans 365 days a year.

The Toronto-based travel company says that uplifting local women through travel has been at the heart of its community tourism approach to travel for over three decades. Today, the small-group adventure operator, alongside its nonprofit partner, Planeterra, works year-round to create employment and education opportunities for disadvantaged and marginalised women.

Together, they support 54 initiatives that foster women’s participation in leadership roles across 22 countries, directly benefiting 2,616 women through tourism. And since the launch of ‘Project 300,’ which sees G Adventures and Planeterra working to reach 300 community tourism projects by 2030, a number of new female-led initiatives are currently in development for 2025.

G suggests that simple changes to the way travellers holiday can make a huge impact on local women around the world:

• Choose an operator who employs female tour leaders – Seeing the world with operators who employ female tour leaders is a powerful way to ensure women are benefitting from your travels. In many countries, tourism is viewed as a male sector and women are overlooked, especially when it comes to tour guiding. By opting for a company that employs female guides, travellers not only offer empowerment and employment to the women, but they also help to challenge and change the social narrative around women in travel.
• Stay with local families – In many destinations, it’s the women who run the household. But often, their access to employment opportunities is limited. Homestays provide travellers with the opportunity to build meaningful connections with local people and to see a destination through their eyes, while providing women the chance to celebrate their culture, share stories and earn independent income.
• Eat in restaurants that empower women – Exploring a destination through taste and flavours is part of the joy of travel. But beyond just filling travellers’ stomachs, a meal in a female-run or operated restaurant can provide a vital source of economic independence for women in disadvantaged communities, and helps them gain confidence and experience to move into other areas, if they wish to.
• Seek out female-founded co-ops – Skip the ‘10 best things to do’ lists and instead seek out local co-operatives that help to uplift local women. There are thousands of female-founded co-ops around the world, with trailblazing women behind them, working to better the lives of more women in the community. Planeterra’s website is a trove of information about organizations that support and uplift women.
• Tell your friends – Sharing knowledge and lessons learned from meeting women from different cultures across the globe, whether it’s word of mouth or via social media, is a powerful way to inspire others to rethink how they travel and to seek out more responsible ways to see the world and support local women.

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