Female Entrepreneurship and Marine Tourism: Innovative Practices on the Coastline

Introduction

The evolution of socio-economic, political and environmental conditions is affecting the fishing activity in the European Union and, in Spain, they have generated a profound crisis situation in the sector (Molina, González and García, 2010). Diversification strategies are thus urgently needed in coastal areas whose economic driving force is fisheries. They are seeking to improve living conditions and strengthen local economies by providing them with complementary sources of income (Farnet, 2011). According to this, it is necessary to promote activities that contribute to the socio-economic dynamization of coastal areas in an integral way through the realization of projects that promote synergies between the fisheries sector, tourism and the use of local resources (coastal tourism activities, marine tourism, cruise tourism, culinary heritage, use of fishery by products, etc.). In this way, the search for alternatives that guarantee the survival of artisanal fishing with great roots in coastal populations, and with the necessary economic, social and environmental sustainability, is being encouraged.

Marine tourism activities represent an innovative proposal that, responding to the diversification needs of the professional fishing activity, provide a new alternative tourism product increasingly demanded by the market that can become a valuable example of revitalization and sustainable coastal development (Sagittal Project, 2007). In order to achieve this goal, this model of local development considers it essential and necessary that economic, social and institutional local agents intervene in the diversification process. Thus, they create a system of productive, commercial, cultural and institutional relations whose density and innovative character benefit the processes of growth and change (Vázquez and Rodríguez, 2015). Consequently, entrepreneurship has become a key option for economic incentive, rural development and even equal opportunities programmes.

In this scenario, the Fisheries Local Action Groups (FLAGs), responsible for managing a European programme in the area, aim at the implementation of a bottom-up strategy of axis 4 of the European Fisheries Fund for the promotion of the sustainable development of fishing areas and play a key role in supporting women's entrepreneurship initiative (Martínez García, 2017). Therefore, many of the initiatives promoted by fisheries professionals are developed, which demonstrate a great dynamic capacity as promoters of innovative projects through which they respond to the demands of the sector and to its own ones as a collective (Spanish Network of Women in the Fisheries Sector, REMSP, 2017).

Due to these considerations, nowadays social tourism undertaking, which is focused on recognizing opportunities to achieve the creation of a social mission that is sustainable over time (Moreira and Urriolagoitia, 2011), have become increasingly important. However, the study about its impact is still absent in literature (Power, et al., 2017; Mottiara et al., 2018), in particular, the nature of the personal and environmental factors that influence this process (Wang et al., 2019). In addition, the way in which gender impacts on entrepreneurship of women working in rural areas has received hardly attention (Forsberg and Lindgren, 2015) so researching in this field also becomes particularly important (Ortiz García, 2017).

Bearing the tourist female entrepreneurship in the countryside in mind, particularly in coastal fishing areas, the aim of this paper is to analyse women's entrepreneurship in the frame of marine tourism as an innovative and territorial development dynamics that collaborate with other sectors (fishing-tourism, gastronomy, canning...) promoting in turn a sustainable economy based on blue growth and development of endogenous resources, in this case, of Galicia’s coastal regions.