Diversity under Pressure: How to remove the Barriers for Female Leaders?
Summary
This panel at ITB Berlin 2025 tackled the stagnation—and in some regions reversal—of women's advancement to leadership roles in the global tourism industry. Dr. Madlen Schwing opened with an evidence-based impulse framing the scale of the problem: the World Economic Forum estimates 123 years remain until full global gender parity, no economy has yet achieved it (not even Iceland, the 16-year leader), women's global workforce participation sits at 41.
2%, and women hold only 28.1% of top leadership positions worldwide. In tourism specifically, women make up more than half of the workforce but remain severely underrepresented at the top, with progress uneven and reversing in some regions.
Schwing flagged four structural barriers—the glass ceiling, the glass cliff (women appointed to leadership in crisis, raising failure risk), role congruity theory (leadership expectations conflict with gender stereotypes), and old boys' networks—plus research finding that networks represent an 'ambivalent reality': opportunities on one hand, but often male-dominated with excess restrictions and extra emotional labor for women. Panelist Karola Hoekstra (25+ years in hospitality exec roles including MD at Thomas Cook Netherlands) named the sponsorship gap as the most critical barrier: men are promoted on potential, women only after demonstrably proving performance, creating a systemic delay. She stressed informal networking as essential personal branding, something she started too late and urges young women to prioritize.
Pétur Óskarsson traced Iceland's gender equality leadership to a sequence of structural reforms beginning with the 1975 Women's Day Off protest, the 1980 election of the world's first female head of state (single mother Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who served 16 years), a 1995 constitutional equality guarantee, shared parental leave around 2000, universal full-day municipal kindergartens, and a 2010 corporate board quota of minimum 40% of each gender. Today Iceland has a female president, female prime minister, and female bishop, yet even there CEO-level gaps in tourism persist despite two-thirds of 25–35 year olds with university degrees being women (versus one-third of men), proving the pipeline is not the problem. Olga Heuser (founder/CEO of Dialogshift, Berlin-based hotel AI platform) challenged the idea that technology is neutral: AI is only as neutral as its historical training data, which is inherently biased.
She cited Amazon's failed blind CV screening in 2018 as a cautionary case, while arguing AI can surface hidden patterns in hiring and promotion data to make inequality undeniable. Her strongest contribution was an organizational design argument: leadership roles are architected for people without family or personal life responsibilities, and this must change—not through 'family-friendly policies' but by normalizing flexibility as a universal human need, not a women's problem. Jens (Chameleon Strategies, ex-CEO Barbados Tourism) offered regional analysis: leadership access for women in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) lags due to lower comfort levels, the Caribbean has strong female representation including female prime ministers and tourism CEOs making it easier for more women to rise, and Saudi Arabia is currently the most transformative environment—driven partly by a desire to counter past perceptions—with a female vice minister of tourism and, announced that same day, a woman named as the new CEO of Red Sea Global.
He pushed for shared leadership structures and reframing the conversation away from women-vs-men toward building healthy organizations. Dikansha Sondhi highlighted India's contrast: women visible at the frontline of tourism, mice, and hospitality but excluded from strategic decisions and brainstorming, though this is changing. Social media (especially LinkedIn) is enabling young women to build professional visibility and bypass traditional hierarchical gatekeeping.
The panel's closing statements ranged from Hoekstra's call for diversity KPIs at board level (not just HR), Óskarsson's Women in Tourism networking series in Iceland (drawing up to 200 attendees), to Heuser's provocative conclusion that structural change requires men to voluntarily give up power—which she considers unlikely to happen fast—urging women to individually reject male-favoring structures and take power themselves.
Key Takeaways
- •The World Economic Forum projects 123 years until full global gender parity across economic participation, education, health, and political empowerment — and no country, including 16-year leader Iceland, has yet achieved it.
- •Women hold 41.2% of global workforce participation but only 28.1% of top leadership positions; in tourism, women are more than half the workforce but severely underrepresented at the executive level.
- •Women are 55% more likely than men to take career breaks due to caregiving responsibilities, creating a structural pipeline leak that has nothing to do with capability.
- •The sponsorship gap is more critical than the mentorship gap: Karola Hoekstra observed that 'men tend to be promoted because of their potential while women tend to be promoted because of what they have shown' — a systematic delay that compounds across careers. Mentors advise; sponsors open doors and advocate for you when you're not in the room.
- •Iceland's gender equality progress was built through a 50-year sequence of structural reforms: the 1975 Women's Day Off protest, the world's first female president elected in 1980 (single mother Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, served 16 years), 1995 constitutional equality guarantee, shared parental leave around 2000, universal full-day municipal kindergartens, and a 2010 40%-minimum corporate board quota. Pétur Óskarsson noted that two-thirds of Icelandic women aged 25–35 hold university degrees versus only one-third of men — proving the talent pipeline is not the problem even in the most advanced gender equality nation.
- •Olga Heuser challenged the AI-as-neutral narrative: 'AI is as neutral as the data it's trained on' — and that historical data is biased. She cited Amazon's 2018 blind CV screening failure as a cautionary example, while arguing AI can make inequality 'harder to deny' by surfacing patterns in promotion and hiring data.
- •Jens identified Saudi Arabia as currently the most transformative environment globally for women in tourism leadership — driven by a desire to counter past perceptions — noting that on the day of the panel the new CEO of Red Sea Global was announced as a woman, and the vice minister of tourism is also a woman.
Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome at ITB Deep Dives. I'm really happy to see so many faces here for our wonderful afternoon session. We now take a deep dive into gender equality with our next session, diversity under pressure. A session dedicated to identifying why leadership progress is stagnating and how we can actively support the next generation of woman executives. Starting with an impulse and moderating the following panel, I would like to welcome on stage an expert in femal...
