Does tourism development improve women's employment? evidence from belt and road countries

This study examines the dynamic relationship between tourism development and women’s employment for countries in China’s Belt and Road Initiative context. Employing a panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model with pooled mean group (PMG) estimation, we analyze data from 12 BRI countries from 2012 to 2023. Contrary to conventional expectations, the empirical results reveal that tourism development does not have a statistically significant short- or long-term effect on female employment rates. Instead, GDP per capita and digital infrastructure are the primary drivers of women’s service sector employment. Notably, female tertiary education enrollment has a negative association with service sector employment, revealing that credential inflation or sectoral preference shifts among educated women. The nonlinear ARDL analysis indicates no evidence of asymmetric effects from tourism expansions versus contractions. These findings challenge common simplistic assumptions concerning tourism’s employment benefits for women and highlight the crucial role of digital infrastructure and broad-based economic development in fostering female labor market participation. This study contributes methodologically by pioneering the panel ARDL-PMG framework in this context and practically by generating evidence-based policy recommendations that prioritize digital connectivity and economic growth over tourism-centric strategies for women’s employment.