Non-economic losses and other impacts of climate change on women in tourism work: A photovoice case study from Kenya's coast

Lucy Atieno^1,2,3*

• ¹Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen, Germany
• ²Leibniz-Zentrum fur Marine Tropenforschung (ZMT) GmbH, Bremen, Germany
• ³Universitat Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Coastal areas drive much of the world's tourism growth while being highly sentitive to climate change. This sensitivity poses significant climate risk to tourism because environmental degradation can reduce attractiveness of destinations. Tourism sector's strong dependencies on women's work exposes it to gendered impacts, as climate risks in coastal environments are not gender neutral but affect women disproportionately. Despite growing attention to climate change in tourism research, methodological limitations have often left out household and community scales underexplored, sidelining women's knowledge and lived experiences. This study addresses these gaps by using photovoice which created a participatory space that enabled participants to frame and articulate climate related changes in their own terms based on their lived experience. Participants photovoices highlighted changes to natural resources and coastal infrastructure corresponding to spaces women's work exists in, and is dependent on. The growing uncertainty of climate change has destabilized boundaries for some of these spaces organizing the core of women's work in tourism, reshaping women's work ways that allow their subordination, rather than equal participation in the ocean economy. Moreover, the photovoices reveal economic and non-economic losses as complementary perspectives on the same processes of change. The interaction of climate change and tourism therefore introduces multidimensional gender-related vulnerabilities, which go beyond economic impacts, to implications for women's political agency and sense of cultural pride. By centering women's experiences, this study advances understanding of gendered vulnerabilities in coastal tourism, and offers insights for more inclusive practices for advancing gender and diversity balance in marine environments.