Two Women Fight to Keep Hope Alive Through War

Iranian tourism leaders Mahsa Motahar and Shahrzad Moayeri are warning that war, sanctions, economic hardship, and international isolation are undermining women’s livelihoods and reversing the opportunities tourism helped create. Sharing their concerns with eTurboNews, they describe professionals losing businesses, careers and international connections—even as women continue to teach, host travelers and adapt to survive.

Motahar, a tourism consultant and Lead International Trainer with the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, and Moayeri, Director of International Affairs at the Association of Iranian Travel and Tourism Agencies, remain convinced that tourism can support women’s independence and serve as a powerful channel for soft diplomacy.

Their frustration raises a question for the global travel industry: What does “women’s empowerment through tourism” mean when the women who built that promise can no longer sustain their work? Their determination makes the question impossible to dismiss.

Across the global travel industry, women’s empowerment is a familiar conference theme. Panels, awards, photographs, and inspiring accounts of entrepreneurs opening guesthouses or becoming guides.

Mahsa and Shahrzad ask what happens after the applause, when visitors stop coming, businesses close, and educated women lose the professions through which they built their independence.

Their answer is uncomfortable: empowerment needs an economy in which it can survive.

Two careers that give the warning weight

Mahsa Motahar, a tourism consultant and Lead International Trainer with the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, has helped develop the professional skills that turn hospitality into a career.

Her work has reached beyond Iran. Helvetas documented her participation as a WFTGA trainer in a 2022 program in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, involving 25 practicing guides. This is a practical example of an Iranian woman contributing expertise to the international tourism community.

Shahrzad Moayeri, Director of International Affairs at the Association of Iranian Travel and Tourism Agencies, has worked to keep that community connected to Iran. In her September 2026 World Tourism Day message, previously reported by eTurboNews, she appealed to international colleagues to preserve professional relationships, dialogue and cooperation despite the country’s isolation.

One works through training and the transfer of knowledge. The other works through international relationships and representation.

Both understand what tourism can make possible. That is precisely why its deterioration hurts so deeply.

When a business closes, a career can disappear with it

In the commentary they shared with eTurboNews, the women describe an industry squeezed by war, sanctions, economic pressures, limited connectivity and political isolation.

These pressures differ in origin and effect, but they converge in the working lives of tourism professionals: fewer opportunities, interrupted relationships and growing uncertainty about whether a career remains viable.

Shahrzad draws attention to a loss that rarely appears in arrival statistics.

When an agency, guesthouse or tourism institution closes, the damage extends beyond its accounts. Knowledge, experience, supplier relationships and years of professional trust may disperse with its staff.

A building can reopen. Reassembling a skilled team is harder.

For a woman who has studied tourism, developed language skills and earned the confidence to run a business, leaving the industry may mean surrendering much more than a job. It can mean losing an independent income, a professional identity and a place in international conversation.

Mahsa raises a related concern about the suspension or closure of tourism businesses and training institutions. Education cannot deliver its promise when graduates have nowhere to apply what they have learned.

A qualification matters. So does the opportunity to earn a living with it.

The world has heard this warning before

The wider industry has evidence that women’s gains in tourism can be substantial—and vulnerable.

The 2019 Global Report on Women in Tourism, produced by UNWTO and partners, found that women represented 54 percent of the tourism workforce, compared with 39 percent across the broader economy. Those are historical findings, rather than a current employment count, but they explain why a tourism crisis can carry a particularly high cost for women.

The pandemic exposed that vulnerability internationally. A 2020 United Nations policy brief identified women, young people and informal workers among those especially exposed to tourism’s collapse, particularly where social protection was limited.

War and a pandemic are different catastrophes. The shared lesson is that professional progress can unravel when the market sustaining it disappears.

Iran’s circumstances are its own. But the question Mahsa and Shahrzad raise belongs to every destination that celebrates women’s entrepreneurship without planning for those businesses’ survival during a crisis.

A lesson from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina offers a useful comparison about rebuilding opportunity in a country carrying the legacy of war.

UNDP describes how the Via Dinarica initiative has connected trails, communities, guesthouses and small businesses. During the pandemic, the initiative created or retained 80 jobs, 60 percent of them for women, while supporting more than 60 service providers.

That experience does not provide a ready-made solution for Iran. It does demonstrate the value of practical support: partnerships, investment, infrastructure and access to customers.

Admiration alone cannot sustain a guesthouse. Calling a woman resilient does not pay her staff.

The lesson for tourism leaders is to connect the language of empowerment to the conditions that make professional independence possible.

The quiet diplomacy of meeting someone

Mahsa describes hospitality as a culture of care, shaped by Iran’s long history of exchange along major trade routes and passed down through generations, particularly through women.

That observation also deserves a modern interpretation. Care is skilled work. Welcoming guests, interpreting heritage, managing expectations and building trust require judgment and professional ability.

For international visitors, a guide or host may become the person through whom a country acquires a human face.

A conversation about food can lead to a conversation about family. An explanation of an old building can open a discussion about identity. People who arrived with assumptions may leave with questions—and sometimes friendships.

This is where tourism’s soft power becomes tangible.

It cannot stop an airstrike, negotiate a ceasefire or remove political restrictions. Its contribution is smaller, but still consequential: it can make it harder to reduce an entire population to its government or a geopolitical headline.

Women deserve authority in this work as owners, educators, negotiators and decision-makers. Their role should extend well beyond appearing in promotional photographs as evidence of inclusion.

Strength should not become another obligation

What is striking about Mahsa and Shahrzad’s message is that their frustration has not erased their belief.

They describe women continuing to teach, host, develop experiences and adapt their businesses. Some have turned toward domestic travelers as international opportunities have narrowed.

These efforts preserve skills and livelihoods. But domestic demand cannot automatically replace lost international business, particularly when households are themselves under economic pressure.

Nor should women who leave tourism be judged as less determined. Sometimes changing careers is the responsible decision that keeps a family financially afloat.

The strength worth admiring here is the ability to speak honestly about the damage while continuing to defend the possibility of something better.

Their argument makes room for anger. Hope does not require pretending that conditions are acceptable.

What the international industry owes its colleagues

Taking these women seriously means keeping their expertise in circulation.

Tourism associations, educators and professional networks can include Iranian women in substantive discussions, sustain mentoring relationships, support accessible learning and listen to their assessments of what their industry needs.

Where cooperation is feasible, it should give women meaningful professional roles and compensation.

Preserving such relationships does not require presenting travel as safe when conditions do not justify it. Trustworthy tourism depends on honest information. Professional solidarity can continue even when leisure travel cannot.

Most of all, international colleagues should resist allowing an interrupted visitor economy to become a permanent exclusion from the industry’s conversation.

Mahsa and Shahrzad are asking whether the people who speak so confidently about empowerment will remain engaged when empowerment becomes difficult.

Their provocation—“Women Empowerment Through Tourism Is a Joke During the War!”—expresses the distance between an industry’s promises and the reality of trying to keep a career alive.

Yet they still see tourism as a bridge.