Author: Wren Holbrook

In a recent study, a couple of scholars are sharing ways that the gender gap still persists in the United States today. In this article, they explore the ways that gender is impacting the Airbnb hosts as the U.S. Census Bureau reported that female Airbnb hosts make 25% less each yer than male Airbnb hosts which is a little more than $4,000 a year.

With this piece of information, researchers Alexander Davison and Mark R. Gleim conducted research consisting a sample of 8,000 public profiles that were accessible on the Airbnb platform on a numerous amount of variable such as nightly prices, number of yearly visits, average length of stay, amount of guests accommodated per stay, how long the profile had been active, and the property value.

Their analysis found these results:

• The average nightly rate of female hosts was $30 cheaper
• Female hosts booked fewer reservations.
• Each booking typically hosted fewer guests.
• Women make up 53% of the platform’s hosts.
• Women have slightly higher value in their property.
• No significant results in the years of activity between the two.

The scholars also found that the biggest gap tends to if a host is renting a whole home or just a private room in their own space. They also state that even when they control for listing-related factors, the gap does tend to to shorten but the difference is still remains. Davidson and Gleim recognize in their article that there are still things that are unknown such as if this trend is consistent on other similar platforms such as Homestay or Vrbo, if there are gendered differences in the approach to hosting, or if male and female hosts are aware of the differences in their listing.

Do these trends occur in hospitality specifically or do they also exist in the housing market as well?

Female Airbnb hosts earn thousands less per year than male hosts Published September 22, 2023 by Alexander Davidson and Mark R. Gleim.

While reading the book UnFree, we have been engaging in conversations and discussions on labor laws and ethical environments for the workforce and how unregulated systems have continuously created unsafe spaces for domestic workers in the UAE. These conversations have had a historical past with the popular topic that is touched on in grade schools being American child labor laws. A head curator of the University of Maryland is bringing the discussion up again as they complete a project to digitize a sociologist’s work who had a hand in pushing for the reform of child labor laws. They also are bringing this conversation to light as child labor law violation as still occurring even 2023 and even in the United States.

This sociologist’s name was Lewis Wickes Hine and he photographed over 5,400 photos of American children and their working conditions which ultimately helped make a successful case about the ethics of child labor and in 1916 the Keating-Owen Act was passed which limited working hours for kids and prohibited the interstate of goods that was produced by child labor. Following this congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 and created both restrictions and protections on employing kids.

Hine’s works were incredibly important at allowing the viewers to understand the importance of child labor laws and the unsafe regulations they were forced to endure but he failed to picture the treatment of black children or children who had immigrated to North America as immigration was increasing. This exemption of children leads people viewing the photos to have a skewed idea of what is going on as they only perceive what is outwardly visible to them and this goes on into the ethical issues of photography and vulnerable populations in this day and age. As stated earlier, these conversations are popping back up again and gaining attention in the sociology field as child labor violations and exploitations are starting to be recorded again such as the example of Popeye’s workers protesting outside of a Popeye’s restaurant in California after there were reports of child labor violations.

Back in 2015, the International Labor Organization had emphasized that laborers in Myanmar start employing Hine’s tactics and to start photographing their environments to give a face to the issue as photos are an easy way to put someone else’s experiences into perspective. However, this isn’t an issue just outside of the U.S. yet we mostly only see photos of other countries in our discussions about unfair labor laws. In the example of the Popeye’s employees protesting, the children who were working underage are a vulnerable population and are kept from photos or their stories being told due to ethical concerns of privacy. The question they leave us in the article to discuss is “if Hine’s photographic archive of child laborers is evidence of the power of photography to sway public opinion, does the lack of images in today’s reporting – even if nobly intended – create a disconnect?”.

The US has a child labor problem – recalling an embarrassing past that Americans may think they’ve left behind published June 9th, 2023 by Beth Saunders.