Navigating Safety: 10 Countries Women Should Never Travel to Alone

Traveling solo for women can be an empowering and rewarding experience. It can be a chance to step outside of your comfort zone, explore new places, and meet new people. It can also be a time to learn more about yourself and what you’re capable of.

However, it’s important to be aware of the risks associated with solo travel, especially for women. Women are more likely to be victims of sexual harassment and assault, and they may also face discrimination and other challenges in certain countries and cultures.

Thailand 

“Thailand had the worst score in our list regarding violence against women attitiudes. This country also had poor rankings in intimate partner violence and gender inequality.” Fergusson said. 

South Africa 

“With this nation scoring poorly on street safety and many other factors, women in South Africa have been historically treated cruelly, but thankfully situations have been slowly improving. Often, travelling women to South Africa are warned not to hike, drive, walk or move about alone and to generally behave conservatively.” Fergusson said. 

India 

“India scored the worst out of our 50 countries in the gender inequality category. It also had poor rankings in intimate partner violence and the gender gap. Sadly, almost 90% of women who are raped in India knew the perpetrator.” said Fergusson. 

Brazil 

“Brazil, which scored badly with both street safety and intentional homicide against women, this sun drenched country also performed poorly in the Global Gender Gap category. The United States government warns tourists not to walk alone at night or to physically resist any robbery attempts.” says Fergusson. 

Morocco

“Morocco ranked the worst in our list for intimate partner violence. It also scored poorly with gender inequality and the global gender gap. The street safety score was not much better, either.” said Fergusson. 

Russia 

“Scoring below par on both the intentional homicide against women and non-partner sexual violence, Russia comes into the top 10 on the list. This beautiful vodka-loving country also performed poorly in a host of categories including being the ninth worst with legal discrimination against women. Thankfully the #metoo movement has been making headlines in Russia showing signs that things are slowly improving for the better.” Fergusson said. 

Egypt 

“Egypt ranked especially badly in both the global gender gap (fourth worst) and gender inequality (sixth worst). This country was also the tenth worst for street safety. It also has particularly poor marriage and divorce laws and fairly poor government representation. But attempts to lower the gender gap are being made by granting over 600 scholarships to womenstudying in fields of business, science and engineering.” said Fergusson. 

Mexico 

“Since Mexico is by far the most visited country out of the top 10 worst, it really caught our eye. The three areas that Mexico ranked abysmally for were street safety, international homicide, and non-partner violence. In fact, Mexico ranked in the top four worst in all three of these categories. Many news reports have cited that unfortunately Mexico is becoming more and more unsafe and it’s best to only stay within your resort to minimise negative incidents.” stated Fergusson. 

Dominican Republic 

“The Dominican Republic is an extremely popular destination for American tourists and has recently been making headlines after a string of mysterious deaths. In our index, this beautiful Caribbean Island ranked sixth worst, scoring particularly woefully with street safety. Whether the recent media hype is real or not, our study certainly found this country isn’t safe for women travelling alone. This surprised us because of the recent string of events we’d never heard of problems for tourists going to the Dominican Republic.” said Fergusson.

Iran 

“Of the top 50 most-visited countries, Iran scores the worst in the Global Gender Gap study. It also scored quite terribly with inequality and discrimination categories placing this country fifth worst in our index. One area that Iran did perform well in was the fact that they had very low levels of intentional homicide against women.” Fergusson said. 

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