The dangers of independent travel: a century of advice for 'lady travellers'

The earliest travel guides written especially for women appeared in the late nineteenth century and were followed by numerous others throughout the ensuing decades. These books can be read as primary records of women's travel experiences, as gendered discourses which reflect cultural constructions of femininity and masculinity, and as a domain where discourses of femininity have evolved int discourses of feminism. This paper analyses seventeen travel guides written by and for women travellers between 1889 ad 1992 In these guidebooks, travelling without the protection of a male escort is linked consistently to the dangers of harassment or worse by men encountered along the way. These analysis focuses on the author's advice regarding how to avoid or handle unwanted advances from men. While the list of avoidance strategies has changed little over the past century, other elements of travel advice for the lone woman have. Through time, the authors of the guides shifted the responsibility for men's behaviour from the woman traveller herself, to the man and stiffened the recommendations for dealing with harassment from 'ladylike' coolness t aggressive verbal and physical defences. Empirical evidence that the perception of danger from men us greater than the actual risk for women travellers is cited and the question of why travel is equated so consistently with peril for women raised.