I dithered for a really long time about what F is for in the A-Z of Solo Female Travel before it dawned on me – let’s talk a bit about why solo female travel is different from general solo travel. And so F is for Female.
Women out and about on their own are more vulnerable than men out and about on their own. We have safety considerations that often simply do not occur to men. We are often seen as easier targets and we’re often less inclined to believe in ourselves because still, in the year of our lord 2023, we’re told “women can’t do that” and we’re more inclined to take “you can’t do that” more seriously than men would.
For a disclaimer: I’ve never really felt anything like this myself. I don’t remember anyone favouring the boys at school, my degree was very heavily female-dominated (ok, my caving club wasn’t!), I’ve been a Girlguiding member since I was four and a leader since 2007 so a lot of my adventures and activities and events have been entirely female-dominated and even at work, we outnumbered the men by quite a lot. My world has never been one in which women were put down or belittled. I’ve never felt like I was smaller or lesser because of the reproductive organs I was born with and I’ve never had to fight to show I can keep up with the big strong men (except that time Andy said he’d rather go caving with JC than us girls and Nigel said he’d headbutt him if he ever said anything like that again).
I’ve therefore never felt more vulnerable travelling on my own than anyone else. I admit, I’ve probably had a giant dollop of luck and there’s probably an element of naivety. But since 2008, I’ve done 440 days away on my own – which, it turns out, doesn’t include several camping trips in the UK – and I’ve never had a problem or even had a difficult situation or even imagined a difficult situation. I mean, I’ve had my share of problems – jumping off the train in the wrong place in Romania, getting on the wrong train and going to the train depot in Helsinki and endless failures to find my accommodation – but that’s not the sort of difficulty we’re talking about here. That’s a general solo issue of me being heedless rather than a systemic solo female issue.
Is it that I’ve been lucky? Or is part of it that I’ve not allowed myself to end up in potentially difficult circumstances? I honestly don’t know. I listen to my instincts when they shout “don’t go down there!” but they don’t shout that often. Maybe I don’t get close enough that they need to shout. Maybe those extra safety considerations are now so built-in that I don’t even notice them.
Or maybe you just don’t need to worry and panic as much as the world tells you. You’ve seen “all women have a horror story about [x], [y] or [z] and if they say they don’t, it’s because you’re the subject of their horror story”. I rack my brains every time I see this. I honestly can’t think of any horror stories. Do I mentally downplay them? I’ve had a man or two who didn’t know when to shut up and leave me alone on a late night train but I’ve never felt threatened by or afraid of them. I’ve never been followed or harassed. Well, there was the time when I was living in Switzerland when the man came and sat next to me at the lake and insisted on getting my phone number but all I did was sigh internally, go back to my student tower block where there were three doors between the fresh air and my own room, lock him out in the courtyard and grumble about how I’d been enjoying sitting by the lake. Again, I never felt like I was in any danger and I was never in any doubt about getting rid of him safely. He was tiresome rather than a threat. That’s the only two occasions in my entire life that come close to even the sort of subjects that appear in these horror stories.
My point is that there’s actually very little difference between your mum saying “Oh, going travelling is far too dangerous!” and the internet, which is supposed to be the place that tells you that you’re strong and brave and can do anything. Just like you don’t have to be petrified into staying in your bedroom by your mum, you don’t have to be petrified into staying in your bedroom by the internet either. For every horror story, there are several thousand stories of wonderful, amazing, life-changing moments. I’ve just done a count. I lived in Switzerland from October to July and I’ve spent more than 440 days away between 2008 and today. Just think how many good things happened compared to the number of less good things. No, the safe and happy outweigh the bad and the dangerous by so much.
In terms of special safety considerations, it’s just the same stuff you do at home. Don’t go down dark alleys drunk and alone in the middle of the night. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t get talked into taking strangers home or going home with them. If it feels bad, it probably is bad – walk away.
Are we easier targets? It’s easy to say things like “I’ve never done any martial arts or self-defence classes so I probably am”. Think about your male friends and relatives. Have they ever done any of those sorts of things? Probably not. Can you think of a single one who you think could realistically fight off an attacker? Because when I think about my male friends and relatives, I’m inclined to think I’m a more able fighter than most of them. So no, women are probably not easier targets, because men are probably no more difficult. We’re probably perceived as easier targets but if you look at crime statistics (I’m looking at the Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending September 2018) men are more likely than women to be victim of a crime – in the 18-24 age group, 2.3 times more likely.
Do we believe less in ourselves? There’s another thing that goes around about women “being socialised” to be peacemakers and to be less assertive. Men get more pay rises and better jobs than women because it’s less likely to cross their minds that they’re not qualified enough. They think they deserve something, they ask for it. And so, similarly, do women think they’re not brave enough or smart enough to travel solo, while men just go for it? I have no idea. The online travel community seems pretty female-heavy. Is that because we feel like travelling solo is something out of the ordinary enough to make a noise about it while men simply accept it as their due? Is it more about creating content than the travel – is that something women are more drawn to than men, writing, making videos, drawing journals and so on? Is it just unconscious selection bias in that I haven’t realised I don’t like following men on social media? Or are solo travellers genuinely more likely to be female?
(That said, if you watch travel documentaries on TV, they’re absolutely overwhelmingly more likely to be fronted by men…)
If you do have any concerns that you’re not good enough, not brave enough, that travelling isn’t something women do, then I urge you to get out on your social media of choice and look for solo female travellers. I’m going to do a spotlight on a dozen or so favourites later in this series but in the meantime, you can do worse than looking through the people I follow on Twitter or on Instagram. There is nothing in your reproductive organs or your chromosomes or your DNA or anything else you’re using to definite womanhood that means you’re less capable as a woman of doing these things. Maybe there’s something in you personally – some people just aren’t into travel, or solo travel, or can’t do it – but there’s nothing inherent and if there’s something particular in you, I’m sure in most cases you can learn or practice your way out of that particular obstacle anyway.
My Brownies are at the sort of age where the world is very black and white. If you said to my Brownies “Girls can’t…”, there would be uproar. If eight-year-old Sophie (we must be the only Brownie pack in the country that actually doesn’t have a Sophie!) thinks girls can travel, then girls can travel. Don’t let Sophie down. You’re brave enough, you’re smart enough, you’re tough enough, you’re going to take your precautions and you’re not going to listen to the sea of people telling you you can’t do this.