180 Letter from Patrícia Pinto
I was very pleased with the invitation to participate in this book and share some of my experience in tourism research with my female colleagues. I would say that my path in tourism is quite unusual. I concluded my PhD in 2004 in Quantitative Methods Applied to Economics and Management, and I did my thesis applied to modelling consumer behaviour towards pro-environmental practices. Until then, I had no contact at all with the tourism field. I started researching tourism one year after, in 2005, when Antónia Correia invited me to collaborate with her in a research paper. Since then, my consumer behaviour models have started to be mainly applied in tourism, and I can say that I am very proud of my contribution to the field. From 2005, tourism research has allowed me to supervise brilliant PhD students, and some of them are now dear colleagues and friends. It also allowed me to be involved in coordinating the first PhD program in Tourism in Portugal, and, currently, being responsible for the most important research centre in Portugal, CinTurs, the Research Centre in Tourism, Hospitality and Well-being. Despite my immense responsibility with CinTurs, I still consider myself mainly a dedicated teacher at the Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve.
If my career ended now, I would look at the past with the feeling of “well-done work” and immense gratitude. I work still 16 years old, giving math classes to friends and colleagues. I now struggle to do well a vast number of different tasks in my diversified work branches, mainly as a professor, researcher, and coordinator of CinTurs. Sometimes I complain (a lot, I have to confess) about being involved in so many things, but the fact is that I love working and my job(s). Indeed, I feel I am a fortunate person: I have the opportunity of spending a big part of my day doing something I adore.
Nowadays, and in the past, I’ve been working with inspiriting male and female colleagues and students. I only assumed a huge management responsibility a few years ago with CinTurs. Until then, I was only a researcher and teacher, distracted from the gender unbalance in top management positions. I have to admit that I always considered quotas for females in leading positions as humiliating and unnecessary. From my perspective, merit, not gender quotas, should be the way to achieve that positions. My opinion didn’t change but, today, observing that top categories are still mostly occupied by men (and brilliant men are not more numerous than brilliant women), I understand that, unfortunately, these quotas are needed in most professions.
Well, since this forum is giving me the opportunity of sharing some recommendations with my female colleagues, I end with a few tips:
1) Don’t forget what motivated you to enter the academy. In my case, it was the opportunity to teach. So, I try to bring my research to classes, improving them by including my research findings. Moreover, the academy is much