There's lots of focus on solo female travellers. There's even a section on it in every Lonely Planet. In our deeply patriotic society and lack of gender equality in most of the world, it's right women are given advice.
As a woman in the UK, I enjoy a lot of freedom. I earn more than most men. I own property and a car. I'm in senior management. I vote. I'm sexually liberated. And I can go out, get pissed and stumble home at whatever time I want in relative safety.
Even though I enjoy all these freedoms, there's still a lot of work to do in terms of gender equality. Just look at the gender pay gap and lack of women in the boardrooms or in positions of power. Women are also missing from swathes of industry, like motoring, computer programming and trade.
However, this plight pales in comparison to how women are treated in other countries. It wasn't until recently that women in Saudi Arabia could drive. According to the Huffington Post, 848 women are harassed, raped and killed in India every day. And in Iran, it's actually illegal for women to dance in public.
I crow from the rooftops about how a woman can wear what she wants and drink as much as she likes without becoming prey to sexual predators and be judged for it by police, medical professionals courtrooms and society should anything happen. As this sass queen from the SlutWalk illustrated perfectly while being interviewed by an ultra-conservative preacher a couple of years ago
In an ideal world, there wouldn't be travel advice specifically for women. But this isn't an ideal world - if it was, progressive, leader of the free world America wouldn't need a SlutWalk.
So that's why we need to help women who are liberated and empowered enough to venture to all corners of the world and experience everything their male counterparts do on their own, but confined and judged according to their gender in other parts of the world.
Why shouldn't women go Holi or climb K2 or paddle into the Amazon or live among the tribes in Borneo? They absolutely should and champion womanhood to less progressive societies. But they should do this safely by knowing what the local attitude is to women, how they're expected to behave and legalities that they need to be aware of.
Go forth women, fight the good fight. Show misogynistic and chauvinistic cultures your metal. But do your research, you're in a foreign country and on their terms. And some of them aren't very nice, even to foreign tourists.
