With International Women’s Day on the horizon and Women’s History Month this month, I want to talk about an industry that women have largely built, and a glass ceiling that remains stubbornly intact.
The data tells a stark story: women account for 54% of global tourism workers and 77% of the global events workforce. By every measure, this is our industry. And yet, according to IBTM and Event Marketer research, we hold only 16% of director-level roles and only 7% of CEO and chair positions.
This is not a pipeline problem; it’s a structural one.
A recent World Bank report, Women, Business and the Law 2026, puts our industry’s reality in a sobering global context. Globally, women enjoy only two-thirds of the legal rights granted to men. Not a single one of 190 economies assessed provides women with full economic equality. Even where laws exist, fewer than half of the enforcement systems needed to make those rights real are actually in place.
And the stakes could not be higher. Across the Middle East and beyond, armed conflicts actively reverse hard-won progress, and the travel and hospitality industry feels it directly. Women who built careers in tourism, events, and hospitality in conflict-affected regions are among the first displaced from the workforce. Destinations go dark, programs get cancelled, and the women running them lose not just income but professional footing that takes years to rebuild. That is not just a human rights failure; it is a leadership failure that the travel industry cannot afford.
The events and hospitality industry reflects this broad picture: women encounter the “sticky floor” of low wages and the “glass ceiling” limiting leadership opportunities, not because they lack ambition or capability, but because of systems that were built and put into place.
Why This Matters for the MICE Industry
In a growth industry such as ours, currently valued at $325B and projected to reach $600B by 2029, we simply cannot afford structural inequality.
The meetings and events industry sits at a frustrating contradiction. Women dominate at every level of execution: planning, logistics, client relations and operations. We are the ones on the ground, building the programs, managing the budgets, and delivering the experiences. We know, better than anyone, what works and why.
At the same time, we remain underrepresented in the boardrooms where strategy is set, budgets are controlled, and value, including return on investment (ROI), is assessed.
That disconnect matters, not just as a matter of equity, but as a business problem with real consequences.
The Boardroom Gap Is a Business Problem
Here is what the women running the operations of this industry understand: face-to-face matters. In-person events are not a line item to be cut when budgets tighten; they are a revenue driver, a relationship builder, and one of the most measurable tools a business has. The data backs this up. According to reports by Bizzabo and Splash, 87% of business leaders say that in-person events are critical to their company’s success and 52% of closed-won deals can be directly attributed to events. The ROI on a well-executed incentive program, a leadership summit, or a client event is not soft; it is documented, it is significant, and it compounds over time.
The women managing these programs know this. They see it in the numbers. They hear it from clients. They live it in the results.
But when those same women are not in the room where investment decisions are made –when the C-suite is setting strategy without the people who understand the operational and commercial value of events and incentives– that knowledge gap costs companies real money. Budgets get cut from the wrong places and opportunities get missed.
Having women at the table is not about representation for its own sake. It is about bringing the full picture into the room: the operational intelligence, the client insight, and the hard-won understanding of where and why events move the needle for a business.
Our Commitment
At Global DMC Partners, this is not just something we believe; it is something we act on.
I am personally committed to carrying this message to the C-suite and will be announcing new initiatives very soon.
Stay tuned for more to come!
And as always, I am very interested in your feedback.
