Search results

Gender barriers; Is the Dutch hospitality industry inhospitable towards its women employees?

Gender barriers are a complex problem, as they are created and maintained by multiple dimensions of our societal system; governments, the corporate world, and by society itself. Within the hospitality industry, one of the most people-oriented sectors there is, gender barriers are especially a problem. Although there is equality amongst the entire Dutch hospitality sector in general (48.2% women, (CBS, 2022)), only 17% of top-management positions within the 5 largest hotel-chains in the country are occupied by women (Hampshire Hotel Group, 2022; Accor Group, 2022; van der Valk International, 2022; NH Hotels, 2022; NIBC, 2022). With the hospitality industry revolving around people and experiences, it is of utmost importance that it represents the actual world-population and society. In order to address the current challenges the industry is facing, it is time to face the elephant in the room; why don’t women get included in top and senior management within the hospitality industry as much as men do? This trajectory aims to identify where gender barriers occur within the Dutch hospitality industry and accordingly develop, and test interventions (enablers) together with two of the largest hotel-chains in the Netherlands, in order to improve women career advancement. The first phases of the trajectory will focus on the entire Dutch hotel sector, while the intervention phase will only be executed in collaboration with NH Hotels and IHG. The final phase of the trajectory will explore the implications of the findings from the industry to hospitality management education. By enabling more women to advance their hospitality careers, this will have a large impact on the industry’s sustainability and resilience, and again positively impact wider society.

Gender barriers: Is the Dutch hospitality industry inhospitable towards its women employees?

Ghosts and body politics: Hilma af Klint and a feminist re-imagination of portrayal.

Society continues to place an exaggerated emphasis on women's skins, judging the value of lives lived within, by the colour and condition of these surfaces. This artistic research will explore how the skin of a painting might unpack this site of judgement, highlight its objectification, and offer women alternative visualizations of their own sense of embodiment. This speculative renovation of traditional concepts of portrayal will explore how painting, as an aesthetic body whose material skin is both its surface and its inner content (its representations) can help us imagine our portrayal in a different way, focusing, not on what we look like to others, but on how we sense, touch, and experience. How might we visualise skin from its ghostly inner side? This feminist enquiry will unfold alongside archival research on The Ten Largest (1906-07), a painting series by Swedish Modernist Hilma af Klint. Initial findings suggest the artist was mapping traditional clothing designs into a spectral, painterly idea of a body in time. Fundamental methods research, and access to newly available Af Klint archives, will expand upon these roots in maps and women’s craft practices and explore them as political acts, linked to Swedish Life Reform, and knowingly sidestepping a non-inclusive art history. Blending archival study with a contemporary practice informed by eco-feminism is an approach to artistic research that re-vivifies an historical paradigm that seems remote today, but which may offer a new understanding of the past that allows us to also re-think our present. This mutuality, and Af Klint’s rhizomatic approach to image-making, will therefore also inform the pedagogical development of a Methods Research programme, as part of this post-doc. This will extend across MA and PhD study, and be further enriched by pedagogy research at Cal-Arts, Los Angeles, and Konstfack, Stockholm.

InvestWomen

Ongelijke behandeling bij financieringsaanvragen en daarmee beperkte toegang tot financiering is voor vrouwelijke founders de belangrijkste barrière om te internationaliseren. Investeerders stellen vaak hun belang boven dat van de ondernemer en hebben een conservatieve insteek waar het gaat om investeren in bedrijven van vrouwelijke founders die internationaal willen groeien. In een vraagarticulatieproces gaven vrouwelijke founders aan dit als remmend ervaren: investeerders zouden vaak ‘een korte termijn visie hebben, en op vernuftige wijze, founders uit hun eigen bedrijf te ‘ontslaan’ en zelf verder gaan met het concept’. Dit vroegtijdig ‘ontzielen’ van bedrijven heeft op de lange termijn een averechts effect omdat deze bedrijven vaak niet succesvol blijken. Er is behoefte aan: 1. Inzicht in.de belangen van investeerders versus die van vrouwelijke founders 2. Meer bewustwording hoe er wordt aangekeken en omgegaan met vrouwelijke founders Daarom onderzoeken we: • De motieven van vrouwelijke ondernemers om internationaal te groeien • De knelpunten die zij ervaren bij het zoeken naar financiering/investeringen voor internationale groei • De motieven en belangen van investeerders om in vrouwelijke founders te investeren om de volgende onderzoeksvraag te beantwoorden: In hoeverre bestaat er een kloof tussen de belangen van vrouwelijke founders en die van investeerders? En daarmee : 1. Inzicht te ontwikkelen in de door vrouwelijke founders ervaren mismatch tussen hun belangen en die van investeerders 2. Een consortium voor een vervolgtraject te ontwikkelen dat voortbouwt op inzichten uit dit onderzoek om bovengenoemde mismatch op te lossen, 3. bijvoorbeeld door ontwikkeling van een "Gender due dilligence" met daarin nieuwe criteria die recht doen aan internationaliseringsambities van vrouwelijke founders. We sluiten aan bij de Kennis en Innovatieagenda van de missie Maatschappelijke Verdienvermogen en bouwen voor op eerder onderzoek van het HvA-brede lectoraat Entrepreneurship-. Het consortium bestaat uit Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Van Weerden BV en vertegenwoordigers van vrouwelijke ondernemersnetwerken, investeerders en investmentcoaches

Juicy Beans

Kumasi and RokitScience contribute to increasing the ownership and income of cocoa farmers, with an emphasis on women. Kumasi has a successful history of developing and marketing cocoa juice, which aims to keep as much income as possible with the farmer. RokitScience has been involved in the creation of the Rokbar: a "bean to bar" empowering chocolate bar that is marketed and made entirely by women. Kumasi and RokitScience started setting up a cocoa-fruit-lab at the cocoa-cooperative COVIMA in early 2021 in Ivory-Coast, in collaboration with Beyond Beans Foundation/ETG and Döhler and financially supported by the Sustainable-Trade-Initiative (IDH). The goal is to support the cooperative, which is led by women, with the establishment of circular cocoa juice and chocolate production and in this way increase the income of the members of the cooperative. The cocoa pod contains cocoa beans embedded in cocoa pulp. This pulp is sweet and juicy and partly needed for cocoa bean fermentation for flavor development. Residual pulp can be used for new products like drinks, marmalades and more. The collaboration in the cocoa fruit lab created momentum to try-out a more circular approach whereby the extraction of juice was linked to a shorter fermentation period of the beans, influencing quality features of both the beans and potentially the chocolate. However, to optimize the production of juicy beans further and find a market for this (and potentially other) products requires further testing and development of a value proposition and marketing strategy. The main question of Kumasi and RokitScience at Hanzehogeschool Groningen and NHLStenden Hogeschool Amsterdam is: What is the effect on the quality of beans and chocolate if fermented after the extraction of juice? How can this be optimized: comparing ‘cocoa of excellence’ fermentation and drying to traditional post-harvest practices and how can we tell the world?

Juicy Beans

Kumasi and RokitScience contribute to increasing the ownership and income of cocoa farmers, with an emphasis on women. Kumasi has a successful history of developing and marketing cocoa juice, which aims to keep as much income as possible with the farmer. RokitScience has been involved in the creation of the Rokbar: a "bean to bar" empowering chocolate bar that is marketed and made entirely by women. Kumasi and RokitScience started setting up a cocoa-fruit-lab at the cocoa-cooperative COVIMA in early 2021 in Ivory-Coast, in collaboration with Beyond Beans Foundation/ETG and Döhler and financially supported by the Sustainable-Trade-Initiative (IDH). The goal is to support the cooperative, which is led by women, with the establishment of circular cocoa juice and chocolate production and in this way increase the income of the members of the cooperative. The cocoa pod contains cocoa beans embedded in cocoa pulp. This pulp is sweet and juicy and partly needed for cocoa bean fermentation for flavor development. Residual pulp can be used for new products like drinks, marmalades and more. The collaboration in the cocoa fruit lab created momentum to try-out a more circular approach whereby the extraction of juice was linked to a shorter fermentation period of the beans, influencing quality features of both the beans and potentially the chocolate. However, to optimize the production of juicy beans further and find a market for this (and potentially other) products requires further testing and development of a value proposition and marketing strategy.The main question of Kumasi and RokitScience at Hanzeschool Groningen and Hogeschool Amsterdam is: What is the effect on the quality of beans and chocolate if fermented after the extraction of juice? How can this be optimized: comparing ‘cocoa of excellence’ fermentation and drying to traditional post-harvest practices and how can we tell the world?