Dóra Börcsök
Your heart rate increases, your palms start to sweat, and you turn off the music in your headphones or even take it out of your ears just in case. You don’t look around too much because you don’t want to draw attention to yourself. You think of all the names of people you know who might still be awake late at night so you can text or call them, while you keep telling yourself «It’ll be okay, it’s a safe place» and hope you won’t be the exception. No, this is not the opening scene of a horror movie, this is a perfectly normal night for a woman alone on the streets.
I was in Austria over the weekend, and although Austria is the 5th safest country in the world, I can’t say I felt comfortable being alone in Salzburg at 2:30am. I had to decide between getting in a taxi with a middle-aged man or walking for half an hour through the dark streets in the middle of the night as a young woman, and I didn’t like either of my options.
Since walking home at night with a stomach cramp is the baseline, I’d rather not even try to describe what it’s like when it’s just the two of us on the street. Me and a man who is kind enough to walk behind
me at the same pace. Not faster and not even a slightly bit slower, hence that I can make my way in panic, thinking that he’s following me. Instead of, and this is a crazy idea, falling behind or ahead. This is also, not a unique case and I’m not alone with these feelings.
A study carried by a civilian association against crime in 2022 shows that 82 % of women said, they feel unsafe walking alone in a park or outdoors after dark. In fact, half of the women feel unsafe in a quiet street near their home, on public transport or in a busy public space. In their own city… imagine when traveling somewhere. Because why would we want to make a woman to feel safer in the streets, when we can still ignore these problems? After all, it’s just a lovely night, right?
