Traveling on your own can be incredibly empowering, but for women, it can also come with added risks.
Travel couple Asher and Lyric Fergusson created the Women’s Danger Index using sources like the Gallup World Poll, UN Women, Georgetown Institute, and World Economic Forum in order to help determine where it is safe for women to travel solo.
The study gathered information based on 50 most visited destinations around the world. The study shows countries ranked on their level of danger, based on many criteria such as weather a women is safe at walking at night or legal discrimination etc.
The countries considered in the ranking are the 50 most visited countries around the world and each continent is represented.
The eight key points where the research is based are:
- Non-partner sexual violence
- Intimate partner violence
- Legal Discrimination
- International homicide of women
- Violence against women attitudes
- Safe to walk alone at night
- Global gender gap
- Gender equality
The countries were graded from A to F based on these eight factors. None of the countries got an A but South Africa took the place as the most dangerous with a resounding F. South Africa has a history of treating women cruelly and warns women to not do any activities like hiking, walking or even driving alone and to “behave conservatively”
Traveling solo as a female has become a hugely popular trend in recent years and a lot of times women may go to a place a little bit dangerous based on the things they’ve heard from friends or through Instagram, we want to help by creating a resource for women based on actual data from trusted international sources than relying on hearsay and anecdotal evidence says Lyric Fergusson.
Our intention is not to fear people from traveling to any of these countries but instead want to bring awareness to safety issues that may be present.
The most dangerous countries
South Africa is ranked on the first place in the index, and with a certain detachment compared to other countries: although the situation is slowly improving, it barely recommended for women to move around the country alone. Brazil, Russia, Mexico and Iran follow the list. The presence of the United States in the 19th place is surprising.
The safest countries
According to the research Spain is the safest country in the world to travel solo as a women , ahead of Singapore and Ireland: here solo female travelers can enjoy their holiday in complete in peace. Obviously, a negative experience can happen even in places with very low risk, or vice versa, it does not happen at all in places considered dangerous.
