Women play an important role in tourism. Overall, they represent the majority of tourism workers. While women often own and manage their own tourism businesses, they are less represented in management positions. There is a gender pay gap in the tourism sector because women earn less than men for equal work. Although women mostly have a formal tourism education, they generally lack the training skills needed to ensure career advancement. Lack of education or formal training jeopardizes the active participation of women in tourism. According to data from 2018, women represent a large part of the tourism workforce (54%), however, they are still employed in lower positions. This means that, although women's participation in tourism is significant, the overall quality of their participation remains poor. Women's work in tourism is dominated by informality through high staff turnover, long working hours, subcontracting, flexible working conditions, seasonal work. Women's work is concentrated in seasonal, part time and low paid jobs, such as retail, catering and cleaning, both in large hotel chains and in smaller hotels and family businesses. Tourism as a sector offers women great opportunities for entrepreneurship that do not require much funding. However, women continue to face challenges due to limited or no access to finance and the market for starting or growing a tourism business. Women's entrepreneurship also prevents the lack of access to technology, information, business skills, education and training. Women entrepreneurs face many obstacles. The first obstacle is to be a woman. The second is the type of business associated with restaurants or companies that offer the opportunity to meet many people. The third is when women want to develop their businesses in places dominated by large international tourism companies. In Europe, 53% of women are employed in tourism. Although they are well represented as workers in tourism, they do not have the best jobs, income, but also positions. Women in Europe are mostly represented in low paid jobs with poor skills. In Spain, for example, employment in tourism at the executive and management levels is mainly occupied by men, who have more secondary education and experience between 49 10 and 20 years. In contrast, women in Spain tend to have their jobs maintained by social stereotypes -- for example, customer service, cleaning, reception, administrative work, etc. Tourism is the third largest socio--economic sector in the EU. Research shows that tourism has become one of the main generators of income in developed and developing countries, with a volume of business equal to or greater than exports of oil, food products or the automotive industry. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates the impact of tourism on the world economy as 9% of world gross domestic product (GDP). Europe, tourism and women are advancing year after year. There are more and more people, initiatives and struggles for gender equality. Awareness of women that women are no longer the "weaker" sex, that a woman has no place in the kitchen and that a woman is not just for household chores is quite a difficult job given that since ancient times a man is considered stronger, smarter and more successful. The struggle will continue for years to come, until women and men are equalized and where all the rights of men belong equally to women.