Women porters aim to change the travel industry of Cusco.
A few weeks ago, news that participants of the miss Peru pageant contest surprised the world by mentioning the numbers of the crude reality of domestic violence, rape and harassment toward women in Peru and the world, instead of the numbers of their body dimensions.
Such is the backdrop in which leaders from Evolution Treks Peru are launching a unique and powerful initiative, which is paving the way for tours to the Inca Trail in 2018 guided by women porters and women tour guides.
Why has it taken so long for this change?
Firstly, hiring women porters is not profitable.
From a business perspective, it is more convenient for travel operators to hire only men as they can carry more weight and demand fewer expenses in salaries food and transportation, which implicitly means more profit for tour operators. The Inca trail allows entry to only 500 people a day. Over 60% of them are porters. The rules for porters establish that men porters carry 20kg max, while women take 25% less than that.
Secondly, having women porters would involve improvement of working conditions for porters in general.
An recent article exposing the working conditions of porters has been published recently. The logical conclusion to which one draws from that piece is that women porters would not be able to work under such abuse. Also, it would be more difficult for tour operators to hide their bad practices, as tourists would show more solidarity towards women if they saw women working in such conditions.
Consequently, all of it would force tour operators to change these things due to the outright anger and pressure coming from their clients.
Studies have shown that if women are working, communities prosper.
It doesn’t make the community rely on men to work, it also upskills the women and gives them independence and financial freedom. All of which will assist in bringing down the brutal statistics of rape and domestic violence.
