Jelena Stojilković Gnjatović
Facutly of Geography University of Belgrade, Serbia
DOI:
UDC: 338.48:331.5-055(497.11)”2010/2024”
Published: August 2026
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Keywords: tourism, employment, gender, COVID-19, Serbia
Abstract:
Tourism employees face multiple challenges related to job stability, irregular working hours, seasonality, and wage adequacy. Nevertheless, according to the NACE Rev.2 classification, the number and share of persons employed in tourism industries in Serbia have been rising in recent period, except during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the noticeable gender divide, the aim of this paper is to shed light on tourism employment trends for men and women across different tourism sectors. We use annual data from the Labor Force Survey to assess current trends in tourism employment by sex in Serbia for the period 2010–2024, with particular focus on 2020, which was severely affected by the pandemic. Overall men’s participation in tourism employment was almost double that of women during the analyzed period, with the greatest differences observed in land transportation (6 times on average), more than double in case of sports activities, amusement and recreation activities, but also air transport and creative, arts and entertainment activities (1,8 times each). Women represented 1,4 times more employed than men in accommodation, 1,7 times in activities of travel agencies and 1,4 times in libraries, archives, museums and other cultural activities. The similar employment pattern is detected in food and beverage service activities and fairly same number in gambling and betting activities. Employment fell in 2020 for both sexes, but women maintained greater labor engagement, as the number of female employees decreased less during the pandemic. The vulnerability of tourism market employees is multifaceted, and the gender dimension in Serbia highlights that women employed in the tourism sector demonstrated greater resilience in pandemic years.
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