Strengthening Women’s Role in the Tourism Village Economy: A MULTIPOL Analysis for Business Strategies in Penglipuran, a Model of Sustainable Tourism Village

Abstract

Women play a crucial role in the economic development of tourism villages, yet limited access to capital, skills, and institutional support continues to hinder their optimal contribution. Penglipuran Tourism Village is recognized as a model of sustainable tourism that provides space for women’s participation, but strategies for their business development have not been systematically formulated. This study aims to formulate strategies for women’s business development by considering actions, policies, and scenarios of individual and communal enterprises. A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach using the MULTIPOL method was employed to evaluate the priority of actions toward policies, policies toward scenarios, as well as cross-level sensitivity. The findings reveal that at the action level, capital support, training programs, and marketing promotion are the main interventions. At the policy level, skills enhancement is more dominant in the individual scenario, while business support is more prominent in the communal scenario. Overall, three policies consistently prioritized are skills enhancement, business support, and product development. This study extends the application of MULTIPOL from environmental issues to a gender-based socio-economic context, focusing on women’s empowerment in sustainable tourism villages. It also introduces an action–policy–scenario mapping that can serve as a reference for designing adaptive development strategies. The study highlights the need for adaptive strategies that integrate individual capacity building, institutional support, and product innovation according to business contexts. The results provide practical contributions for women’s empowerment policies in tourism villages while broadening the application of MULTIPOL in gender-based socio-economic studies.