Personal Safety Advice for Women: Stay Empowered

Further evidence-based, field-tested advice and invaluable research and studies on this important subject and women’s empowerment are available in the resources section.

I am acutely aware that some suggestions may feel restrictive to your freedom. Personal safety advice for women can indeed be limiting, sometimes preventing you from doing exactly what you want. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable reality that I cannot change. You will need to find a balance between enjoying your freedom and ensuring your safety, which may involve doing things differently than you prefer or altering certain behaviours and habits altogether.

If you feel it is unfair and wrong that women must be cautious, careful, and conscious of their actions—limiting what, when, and how they want to do things—I wholeheartedly agree with you. It is unjust that women should have to change and adapt to a world where rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking are all too common. While there are many good men, it is men who need to rethink their attitudes and behaviour. Ideally, men would behave differently—much differently at times. It would be good, right, and just if the world were a place where women’s safety books were unnecessary and irrelevant. But sadly, that is not the reality we face today.