It's All About Relationships: African-American and European-American Women's Hotel Management Careers

Abstract

Among the 44000-plus general managers

employed in United States' hotels in 1993,

there were only 100 women, 15

African-Americans, and three

African-American women. Additionally, less

than 0.5 percent of corporate hospitality

managers were women. Given this relative

underrepresentation of European-American

women and African-Americans, combined

with the increasing diversity of hotel clientele

and service providers, the purpose of this

study is to broaden our understanding of the

sources of inequitable occupational outcomes

among race-gender groups in hotel

management. Two research questions

addressed are addressed (1) How are hotel

management careers racialized and

gendered?; and (2) How are the career

experiences of African-American women

who are hotel managers different from those

of European-American women who are

managers? A grounded hermeneutic research

approach of joint collection, analysis, and

contextualized interpretation of data was

used. The data were collected using

semi-structured interviews with ten

African-American women and five

European-American women who are hotel

managers. The constant comparative method

of analysis yielded 58 critical difference

defining incidents in which the women's race

and gender influenced their career

experiences. Further analysis of these

incidents yielded four conceptual categories:

career stages, relationships, power resources,

and human resource management practices.

The women's careers were racialized and

gendered through (1) their relationships to

European-American men, which (2) provided

the women with different resources at each

stage of their careers and (3) influenced the

way their superiors, who were predominantly

European-American men, applied human

resource practices. The differences in the

career experiences of the women who

participated in this study were largely a result

of their different positions in relation to

European-American men. These relationships

to European-American men were significant

as the women described these men as "having

an inborn advantage in this industry" and as

"running things." In the final chapter, I suggest

actions hospitality practitioners, educators,

and researchers can take to address several

factors identified as contributing to the

creation of inequitable career outcomes.