Analysing Competencies by Gender in Internships

This paper aims to analyse whether acquisition of competencies is influenced by students’ gender in an internship environment. In order to analyse these effects, we present an introductory and empirical study to know the relationship between gender and competencies in a tourism internship course. A quantitative analysis was conducted on 389 students from the bachelor’s degree programme on Tourism and Hospitality Management at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management Sant Ignasi. The analyses show that women achieve higher levels of competencies than men, except for those related to initiative and entrepreneurial spirit and sensitivity and intercultural awareness. Moreover, significant differences between men and women were found in competencies related to orientation towards achievement and service and planning and organisation. The key finding is the positive effect of being female on competencies, which reveals that in general the level of competencies of men were poorer than those of women when participating in internships.