Before setting out for a weekend in Rome, on my first solo travel venture, I had a particularly bad case of pre-travel jitters. I was already studying abroad in Paris, but going to Rome alone was willingly stripping myself of my friends and host family to venture by myself into the unknown. Everyone I talked to was worried about my safety as a lone woman. I would have no one close by to contact in case of an emergency during my trip. I was repeatedly called "brave" to be traveling alone, but their emphasis on the challenges I’d likely face made me much more afraid. This persistent fear of a terrible tragedy happening in Rome ate away at me, so I did what any sensible person without any prior solo travel experience would do: I googled “safety tips for solo women travelers.”
While the female solo travel tips I gleaned from the Internet got me safely through Rome on my own, I had a major revelation after reading two articles by Jodi Ettenburg of the Legal Nomads (here and here): Solo travel tips are not gendered. In her work as a food and travel writer, Ettenburg details tips for traveling alone. When she gives this advice, she never specifies whether her tips are for men or women, even though she herself is a female. “Carrying a doorstop in your bag, bringing a mugger’s wallet with you or carrying a safety whistle are tips that apply to both genders,” she stated. However, despite being equally prepared for the worst, violence committed against women traveling solo is viewed differently than men traveling solo.
When something bad happens to a woman traveling alone, the blame, if we must blame something, should not be on the woman’s decision to travel solo but on the reality of the international prevalence of violence against women. In 2013, Sarai Sierra, an amateur photographer from New York, was beaten to death while traveling alone in Turkey, and afterwards some critiqued her decision to traveling alone in the first place. This NBC article responds to readers that commented on an article about Sierra’s death, like “A single woman traveling alone is risky. In a foreign country, it is downright foolish.” Women solo travelers rebuked these claims and offered more safety tips of their own to scare off potential attackers, such as wearing a fake wedding band. Creating an illusion of a male looking after us can scare away strangers who may want to attack us, yet more often than not, it is the people closest to us who commit crimes against women, wrenching our whole concept of what we believe to be safe.
The world is not a safe place for women. Traveling internationally is not 100 percent safe for women, but neither is staying home in the United States. In America, a woman is beaten every nine seconds. Everyday in America, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends. Women need to be vigilant, but they also cannot live paralyzed by fear.
"We travel to experience the world, and I do so in the body I've been given." This is the simple way Ettenburg explains her reasons for traveling. She happens to be a woman and she happens to often travel alone. Traveling solo was something I initially did with reluctance, but I learned to enjoy it as much as I enjoy traveling with a companion. I have made dozens of friends from all over the world with other solo travelers that I've met in hostels. I've bonded with the locals while taking surf lessons in San Sabastian or while knocking back Baby Guinnesses at a bar in Dublin with a spunky Irish couple. Fear of traveling alone is a legitimate fear. For me, my positive experiences traveling abroad outweigh my this fear, or any negative event that has ever happened to me. The world is just as beautiful as it is scary, and if we women want to see it on our own, for whatever reason, we should go out and do so.
