Study shows women find solo travel liberating rather than dangerous

March 11, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Women see solo vacations as adventures in freedom and liberation, despite portrayals of those travelers as foolish risk-takers, a new University of Florida study shows.

“Guide books, travel magazines and the travel sections of newspapers are filled with caution, sending the message that women are crazy to embark on such journeys because they make themselves vulnerable to harassment and other attacks,” said Heather Gibson, a professor in UF’s recreation, parks and tourism department.

“They talked about it being a liberating experience because of the freedom to choose their own destination and activities without having to compromise with friends or family members who might want to do something else,” Gibson said.

Working with Fiona Jordan, a senior lecturer in the School of Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education in Cheltenham, the United Kingdom, Gibson interviewed 50 women between the ages of 20 and 63 from the United States and the United Kingdom during the past two years. The women interviewed unanimously reported they found solo leisure travel to be empowering rather than frightening.

With the increasing number of women living alone as a result of divorce, widowhood or never marrying, solo leisure travel for women has become more commonplace, she said.

The phenomenon isn’t exactly new, though.

“Many 19th-century travelogues recounted the expeditions of pioneering women in their big skirts traveling across the British Empire to Africa, India and other faraway places,” Gibson said. Recently, some of those stories have been republished, gaining both popular and scholarly attention, she said.

More recently, the Dec. 2 edition of the New York Times Book Review devoted its travel section to a variety of new books chronicling the adventures of women traveling to remote places, noting that young women in particular are avid travelers, she said.

Women in the UF study, who participated in response to an advertisement, traveled all over the globe, from weekend trips to New York and Washington, D.C., to extended stays in Honduras, Africa and Eastern Europe. Some piggybacked their vacation with other activities, such as teaching English as a second language in Mexico, she said.

Although one woman recalled being grabbed by a Middle Eastern shopkeeper who at first refused to release her, the study’s female travelers reported overwhelmingly positive experiences, Gibson said.

Knowing that some countries and cultures frown on women traveling alone, they used a variety of strategies to protect themselves, such as selecting accommodations in safer parts of town, avoiding rooms on the first floor and making it a practice always to be aware of their surroundings, she said.

“Some women spoke about it being an act of bravery to walk into a restaurant alone to dine because people would stare at them,” she said. “And occasionally they talked about fleeting feelings of loneliness and wanting to have someone to share things with. But this was not something that would keep them home.”

Ultimately their thirst for adventure was stronger than any loneliness pangs, and most found they preferred a solo experience because of the opportunity to make new friends, Gibson said. One American woman taking a trip alone reported meeting five people to dine with at her hotel by the time the plane landed, she said.

The study found some generational differences. Women in their 40s, 50s and 60s often struggled to juggle taking care of elderly parents with the responsibilities of caring for their own families and holding down jobs; those in their 20s and 30s were much freer to roam, she said.

Some of the women in their 30s had toured more than 40 countries, Gibson said. “They described themselves as being fueled by an adventuresome spirit – a wanderlust – and said they had a hard time staying in one place,” she said.

Shortly after they began their research, Gibson and Jordan presented their findings at conferences in the United Kingdom and in Brazil. Later, Gibson discussed some of the more adventurous American women at a conference in Nashville, Tenn.