Current Issues in Tourism
Editor: C. Michael Hall (Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand) and Chris Cooper (Foundation Professor of Tourism, University of Queensland, Australia) Michael and Chris are joint editor of the book series Aspects of Tourism. Reviews Editor John Jenkins (University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia)
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Volume: 11 Number: 2 Page: 167–186
doi:10.2167/cit342.0
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The Solo Female Travel Experience: Exploring the ‘Geography of Women's Fear’
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Erica Wilsona and Donna E. Littleb
aSchool of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Faculty of Business and Law, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia and bSchool of Education, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
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Increasingly, it is recognised that the qualities of human experience are informed not only by the physical world, but also by our understandings of the social constructs that shape our realities. This broader way of thinking allows a conception of space as metaphorical and relational, rather than merely as a physical location or a singularly definable absolute. Drawing from leisure theory on constraints, feminist discourses on leisure/tourism, and the work of ‘new’ cultural geographers, this paper em-pirically explores Valentine's (1989) concept of the ‘geography of women's fear’, as it applies to solo in-ternational travel. In-depth interviews with a group of solo female travellers revealed that these women perceived travel fears relating to others' perceptions, a susceptibility to vulnerability, a sense of restricted access, and a feeling of conspicuousness.
Keywords: gender, women, travel, constraint, feminist geography, resistance
© 2008 E. Wilson & D.E. Little
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