Western Nationality Travel Community Women Time-use Studies

With the flourish of the western minority community tourism, the minority women, as the main body of people who has participated in ethnic tourism, are undergoing changes in living standard, family role, self-development, patterns of behavior, and the patterns of behavior is the most direct among all these changes. As an important pattern of behavior, time-use survey has received more and more attention, but there is very little combination of tourism research and time-use. In order to visually display the tourism impacts on the destination residents’ life, this paper has combined the analysis of time-use with the research in impacts that tourism has brought to the patterns of behaviors of local women. Finally, the paper is aimed at revealing the problems existing in the tourism participation of the local women and directing the tourism development in ethnic communities.This thesis takes Taoping Qiang village in Aba prefecture of Sichuan province as a case study. The analysis process is on the basis of literature analysis and questionnaire survey method, and combine the two methods with the method of anthropology,and uses the Excel software to research the time-use data of local women. The major conclusions of this thesis including:(1)Taoping village has became a "female community"In TaoPing village, a lot of male residents have gone away from hometown to earn more money, only left the old, the children and women in the village for a long time, and then leaded the local women became the primary labor force of their family. Not only the productive labor but also the housework is the duties of local women. Taoping village has been a "female community". At the same time, the local women participated in the communal tourism industry actively while the men are absent generally in tourist reception. Obviously, the Taoping Qiang village has evolved into a "female tourism community".(2)The traditional production mode of women, who have participated in local ethnic tourism, has turned from husbandry to tourism industryBased on analyzing the features of samples, the author find that the principal source of income for women’s families, who have participated in tourism, is tourism industry, but it is the husbandry that is the principal source of income of women’s families, who haven’t participated in tourism. The results show clearly that the two kinds of women have the very different principal source of families. By analyzing the structure of time-use, the author finds out tourism labor which using the longest time among all patterns of labor of women who have participated in tourism, and housework is the labor that women, who haven’t participated in tourism, have spent most of their time. It shows that women who have participated in tourism are no longer the traditional rural ones, they are the new women who are engaged in tourism development and change their mode of production.(3)Tourism participation brings women, who have participated in local ethnic tourism, the "double labor"According to the analysis of structure of time-use, the whole labor time of women who have participated in local ethnic tourism is3.06hours per day longer than women who haven’t participated in tourism, their amount of labor is larger. The tourism labor and housework respectively takes381.98minutes per day and160.5minutes per day for women who have participated in local ethnic tourism, and respectively26.53%and11.15%of their whole day time. When responsible for their tourism labor outside the home and for the majority of housework as well, they are also forced to decline their subsistence and leisure activities in order to keep up with their responsibilities.(4)Tourism labor is the principal factor that has important influences on the distribution of time-use of women who have participated in local ethnic tourismAfter engaged in tourism, women who have participated in local ethnic tourism gradually moved away from the pattern of time-use governed by housework and husbandry. The time-use of all their activities has been effected powerfully by tourism labor, the most obvious example is the peak periods of tourism labor are found without repeat periods of the subsistence and leisure activities. The smaller difference in the women who have participated in local ethnic tourism states that high-strength tourism labor decides their time-use of other activities, and makes their patterns of time-use tend to perform in line with each other.(5)Leisure activities are proved to be the main element that affects the distribution of time-use of women who haven’t participated in local ethnic tourismThe activity influencing the time-use of women who haven’t participated in local ethnic tourism more is leisure activity rather than housework, this situation has shown the important status of leisure activity. Although there is larger difference in the women who haven’t participated in local ethnic tourism, the effect of leisure activity on the whole distribution of time-use of women who haven’t participated in local ethnic tourism should not be ignored.The innovations of this thesis:(1) This thesis rearranges the activities classification based on this study and makes a list of the tourism labor types of local ethnic women, and gives enough emphasis on their housework.(2)The domestic study of time-use has paid little attention on female features and differences between women and men. The author introduces the time-use in research on impacts that tourism bring to destination women.(3) This paper breaks through the previous time-use researches which are dominated by structural and attribute analysis, and adds the distribution analysis of one-day, further defines the principals at points in time of every activity of local women.