‘Being a woman’ in the gastronomy industry: entrepreneurial experiences of women from a cultural tourism destination

Abstract

While women’s entrepreneurship has garnered increasing attention in tourism research, its heritage-based gastronomy contexts remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by adopting a gender-sensitive and sustainability-oriented lens, grounded in gender theory and aligned with key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to examine the entrepreneurial trajectories of women in culturally significant destinations. Focusing on Safranbolu – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Cittaslow member city in Türkiye – this research employs an embedded single case study design to investigate how gendered power relations, socio-cultural expectations, and place-based dynamics shape entrepreneurial engagement in the gastronomy sector. Semi-structured interviews with seven female entrepreneurs were analyzed through inductive content analysis. The findings reveal a complex interplay of motivations, barriers, and enablers: women’s entrepreneurial initiatives are predominantly driven by financial necessity and a quest for autonomy, yet are constrained by persistent gender norms, institutional difficulties, and skill deficits. Nevertheless, informal support networks, cultural capital, and the locality’s slow tourism ethos serve as sources of resilience. The study contributes to the literature by theorizing women’s gastronomic entrepreneurship as both an economic practice and a mechanism for cultural preservation, social inclusion, and sustainable local development.