''My daughter would say I am a superwoman'' : performances of women's success in Slovenian tourism and hospitality

Kuhar, Hana (author), Trdina, Andreja (author)

The article examines media portrayals of prominent female managers in Slovenian tourism and hospitality to analyse their success narratives and the underlying ideas shaping their social positions. Using post-feminism (McRobbie, 2004; Banet-Weiser et al., 2020) as a theoretical framework, it explores how gender myths and neoliberal individualism combine to justify female achievement. The study employs the performativity approach (Goffman, 1959; Butler, 1988) to investigate how women navigate and reproduce existing gender and class narratives in their media performances. Media interviews with successful Slovenian female managers in the tourism and hospitality sector were analysed to reveal how gender and class discourses intersect in their self-presentations. The identified self-performing strategies include a) the myth of meritocracy, bolstered by the gendered discourse of greater renunciation, b) the dialectic between references to women’s solidarity and the emphasis on individualism, and c) the portrayal of feminine care and empathy alongside a display of strict discipline and determination. Against the background of the intimate relationship among neoliberal ideology, postfeminism, and media culture, future policies fostering gender equality in the tourism industry should address practices aimed at bridging unequal opportunities and the materiality of language.

• Language: English
• Keywords: performance, gender, myths, postfeminism, tourism, Slovenia
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Geographic coverage: Slovenija
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 102-112
• Numbering: Vol. 73, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-175106
• UDC: 338.48:141.72(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 1332-7461
• DOI: 10.37741/t.73.1.7
• COBISS.SI-ID: 224849667
• Publication date in RUL: 16.10.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Tourism : an interdisciplinary journal
• Shortened title: Tourism
• Publisher: Institute for Tourism, Croatian National Tourist Board
• ISSN: 1332-7461
• COBISS.SI-ID: 13154824

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: performans, spol, miti, postfeminizem