More and more women are travelling solo, but the sobering reality is that this can be a risky endeavour.

The president of WorldAware, a global risk management provider for companies, recently told the Los Angeles Times that it’s “100% easier to be a man” travelling than a woman.

Recent reports of attacks, murders, and rapes of women tourists worldwide seem to back this up.

That’s why journalists Asher and Lyric Fergusson, who co-write a travel safety blog, have created a new Women’s Danger Index, reports Forbes.

The Women’s Danger Index ranks the world’s most dangerous countries for women travelling alone.

The husband-wife duo ranked 50 countries with the most international tourists using the following eight factors: street safety for women, intentional homicide of women, non-partner sexual violence, intimate partner violence, legal discrimination, global gender gap, gender inequality index and violence against women attitudes.

The data was compiled using sources ranging from the 2018 Gallup World Poll to Equal Measures 2030’s Gender Advocates Data Hub.

You can see the full Index here. These are the top 10 most dangerous countries for women travelling alone.

Yep, South Africa ranks as the most dangerous travel destination for women travelling alone.

Two weeks ago, someone threatened to stab me if I didn’t give them R20, so these results aren’t that surprising.

Let’s take a closer look at what the Index says about the top five:

1. 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,” says Fergusson.

“Often, traveling women to South Africa are warned not to hike, drive, walk or move about alone and to generally behave conservatively.”

Great – it’s nice to know that that’s the image we’re projecting to the world.

2. Brazil

“Trailing next (quite a way behind South Africa) was Brazil, which scored badly with both street safety and intentional homicide against women,” says Fergusson. “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.”

3. Russia

“Scoring below par on both the intentional homicide against women and non-partner sexual violence, Russia comes in at number three on our list,” says Fergusson. “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.”

This is the same country where being queer is outlawed, and where an Instagram influencer was recently found with her throat slit.

4. Mexico

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

Which brings us to…

5. Iran

Iran is safer for solo women travellers than South Africa. Let that sink in.

 “Of the top 50 most-visited countries, Iran scores the worst in the Global Gender Gap study,” says Fergusson. “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.”

America came in as the most dangerous Western country in the world.

“Scoring badly on street safety, non-partner sexual violence and a host of gender inequality issues makes the United States particularly bad for female travelers. For women aged between 20 and 24, homicide is the 3rd most likely way to die, which accounts for a staggering 7.5% of all deaths in this age group.”

If this surprises you, just remember that Donald Trump was elected president even after the “grab them by the pussy” scandal. He also used to hang out with Jeff Epstein, and so did Bill Clinton.

Travel safe and travel smart, people.

[source:forbes]