Gendered tourism experiences in China: exploring identity, mobility, and resistance online

Abstract

This paper presents research exploring the narratives Chinese women and men share online regarding gendered tourism experiences. Data were collected from 260 blog postings and resulting discussion threads on Chinese social media travel sites from March to November 2019. Search keywords included ‘gender,’ ‘women,’ ‘identity,’ ‘safety,’ ‘reasons women travel,’ ‘men’s resistance to women’s travel,’ and ‘sexual harassment.’ Through a critical discourse analysis of travel blog postings, we found negative constructions of women who travel embedded in Confucian values of women as humble, invisible to the public eye, and immobile. Concurrently, bloggers expressed joy in discovering one’s self through travel, as well as anger at the ways in which Chinese women travellers are demonized online. Finally, we consider that while travel blog postings in some ways resist negative stereotypes of Chinese women travellers, ultimately Confucian ideals which discourage female expressions of anger and the valuing of women as family caregivers prevail.