Abstract:

The increase of higher education and the increasing challenges associated with employment and career have impacted students' perceptions of their future work, including career goals, job valuation; self-perceived competence, self-employability, and career optimism. One area of future work perceptions that has yet to be explored is perceptions of the future with respect to decent work. This study, builds on contemporary research on future perceptions of decent work, based on the Psychology of Work Theory (PWT). It examines perceptions of decent work among university tourism students, focusing on gender differences. The recent United Nations publication COVID-19 and Transforming Tourism painted a dire picture of the pandemic's negative impact on global tourism, highlighting a catastrophic loss of 100 million jobs directly attributed to tourism. It indicated that the most vulnerable people in the sector, many of whom are in precarious employment, are women and young people. Despite that, the number of students enrolling in tourism majors has not changed considerably. Moreover, women students continue to represent the majority of students in university tourism courses. Secondly, the sustainable development of societies, businesses and ultimately countries is affected by a fundamental driving force: gender. Finally, much of modern tourism research focuses on tourism as a leisure consumer, leaving research on industry workers and students neglected. A non-experimental design was followed with the voluntary participation of university students in the field of tourism. The sample totaled 79 participants, of which 68.5% were women, between the ages of 18 and 27. As a research instrument, we used the Portuguese adaptation of the scale for the perception of the future of decent work. The research results show that there are significant differences in the levels of perception of future decent work between men and women. Men's perceptions were statistically higher than women for two of the dimensions of decent work: adequate rest and free time, and organizational values that are complementary to family and social values. The critical importance of dignity in tourism employment for achieving Sustainability in the Tourism industry is discussed. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are indicated.

Keywords:

Sustainable tourism, tourism students, decent work, gender.