Women's history month comes with a mix of grief and hope. We grieve all the potential womxn could have everywhere if we had true equality, and try to make peace with the hurt that we've experienced in this patriarchal system. It also means sorority: the possibility of finally speaking out and finding we weren't alone after all, of getting organized and giving the next generation the promise of being able to tap fully into that potential. I hope one day my kids will hear my stories with misogyny and find them relics of an ancient time.
Here’s my story:
I'm the founder of Lunfarda Travel, the world's first Intersectional Travel Agency. I'm a tour guide by trade and travel agent by fate: I wanted to show my city in a more diverse and inclusive way, and I accidentally found myself creating a new way of designing travel products. Whoops!
Lunfarda is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I work as a product designer with underserved communities, empowering them by sharing their stories and craft through tours and experiences.
I was going through a major depressive episode in which I felt I had no future in Buenos Aires. Through guiding, I was able to connect to my city's beauty instead of its complications, and shed light on all the great things my country has to offer. It has been both lucrative and spiritually healing.
I started off as a freelance tour guide, and when I showed up to my bosses with ideas, I was met with skepticism that I suspect was also largely informed by misogyny. In my country, the inbound travel industry is still largely dominated by foreign men. My bosses told me if I wanted to act on my ideas, I should open my own travel agency.
Three years and a pandemic later, I proudly employ 30 people with the ideas my male bosses told me there was no market for. Maybe they just lacked a broader view of what's possible in this industry. I think these bosses shaped me for the better, because today I have great empathy for those who work with me and I make it a point to help them develop their ideas and careers. I think it's a very feminist mindset: collaboration over competition, acknowledgment over egos.
I have yet to find someone like me in the industry: a latina, Jewish, queer, feminist travel agency founder. But I have people I really look up to, like Meg Ten Eyck, Evita Robinson, Marty Lewis or my friends and mentors at the local LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce and of course, my team. They showed me what supporting and elevating people looks like, and they are also advocates for intersectionality, even if they might not use the term. It's because of them and others that my voice was able to reach a global stage, for which I'll forever be grateful. I think that we're not organized in the industry as cis women, but there's definitely spaces that are becoming increasingly intersectional where one can find support, especially in the LGBT+ travel family.
Mariana Radisic Koliren
As a feminist, I'm very aware of the glass ceilings and walls that are still present in the industry. The people I look up to the most are the ones who not only were able to break it, but made a point to throw a line to pull other people in. When womxn and other minorities are invited into spaces and given the choice of bringing other people in, that's when we can truly enact change. I'm always wary of minorities in positions of power who don't realize it's their responsibility to help others get to the decision table. We need to set aside our egos, hear people with different experiences, and let them try solutions to the myriad of issues this industry has. My case shows that when people with 'different backgrounds' get into positions of power, we can shake the industry.
Our organizations need to become feminist and intersectional at their core. Having womxn, members of the black community and people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum means very little when the boards are still packed only by cis, white men. And a very basic thing: it's about time to provide equal mandatory leave for new parents so that the career costs don't fall on just one of the raising partners (usually a cis woman). The lack of equal support for new parents is one of the largest drivers of gender inequality. Simple company policies can do a lot to narrow the gap.
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