Women Traveling the World

By Grace Carballo ‘17

When you’re thousands of miles away from home, everyday annoyances can seem like serious dilemmas, especially when they’re harder to solve in a country you aren’t as familiar with. 

It’s upsetting but not the end of the world when your laptop malfunctions at USC or your credit card gets lost or canceled, but when you’re several countries away from the nearest Apple store and your bank has no branches in your host country, it can be fairly terrifying to say the least. It happens to everyone at some point or another and just like that, the honeymoon phase is over.

(My Macbook charger broke into two adorable pieces during midterms week and the upcharge on Apple products in Argentina is so absurd that most online forums advised me to head on over to Uruguay to buy a new one. Luckily a brilliant man, Ricardo, fixed it for me after a friend referred me to him).

When you go abroad you should sort of expect the unexpected, and patience is a skill you’re sure to develop, but there are some things, far more upsetting than traveler’s diarrhea or rats in your shared student house (been there, done that) that you should never have to put up with, and I hope you don’t have to. 

Unfortunately, as you may have learned in your study abroad orientation, or perhaps from lived experiences, there are unique challenges in study abroad, and let’s be real, in all of life for students of color, LGBT/queer students, and women.

I personally can only speak to the challenges of being a woman studying abroad but fortunately or unfortunately last week provided me with plenty of subject matter; my feelings about human nature were all over the place, because though I usually lean towards the “generally good” side of the spectrum, I found myself quite the jaded realist when things “got real.”

Then, just days later, I found myself at the mercy of a stranger who was so good to me, to the point of near unbelievability, that I couldn’t help but reevaluate my outlook once more.

I guess that’s also part of the nature of study abroad. You learn a lot about yourself, but you also learn a lot about people in general- the good, the bad, and the ugly, and not necessarily in that order.

Bad news, in my opinion, is best delivered first so buckle up, friends. Though the year is 2016 and I’m sure we all hoped we’d have progressed a lot further than we have, it is still objectively hard to be a woman, and traveling in a different country brings with it unique challenges to this identity that frankly, most men just don’t even have to consider. 

As someone who identifies as a woman and who is in the middle of my third study abroad experience of my undergraduate career (Madrid- Summer 2015, Managua- Fall 2015, Buenos Aires- Spring 2016), I feel qualified to speak on this issue, though I don’t doubt someone will try to mansplain my own lived experiences to me upon my return, as it wouldn’t be the first time.

(It is shocking how many men I associate with subscribe to this publication without realizing it.)

Women traveling and women studying abroad have different experiences than men studying abroad and, oftentimes, have a lot more than their male counterparts to consider and concern themselves with.

In the fall, the male students in our SIT Nicaragua program - all of whom were wonderful and feminists and very conscientious, intelligent, and informed- regarded the men working in our homestay neighborhood as friendly acquaintances.  We, the female students, tried to avoid these same men whenever possible because their calls and looks were anything but friendly when directed towards us. The guy students did not even realize this until we explained to them how differently we were treated when they, the male students, weren’t by our sides walking to class. I don’t blame or resent them for not knowing about it, of course, but I do envy them for not having to be constantly aware of their surroundings like we as women had to and have to, in whatever city.

My friend and classmate, Josué, would run to relieve stress after class, just as the sun was setting. My host family would never have let me, as a woman, go out alone in the dark and I would never have even asked to. It’s unbelievably frustrating to feel so unsafe and so limited because of something you can’t control.

And I can’t even begin to explain how exhausting it is to feel like you are being looked at and watched all the time. It’s not fair that half the class will arrive having walked to school in peace while the other half arrives mentally drained from ignoring the piropos, lingering looks, and crude noises. 

And I want to be clear that I know these gendered differences and stereotypes and street harassment of women are not problems unique to the countries I’ve studied abroad in, nor have they tainted my perceptions of the amazing people I’ve grown to love there, but rather something women face in some manifestation or another in every single country. You just might note it more when you’re in an unfamiliar environment.

Last week, as you may have seen in an earlier post if you follow my blogs as closely as my mother does (and by extension, her colleagues), I was in Salta and Jujuy, traveling with a group of 4 female friends. Some might dub this “traveling alone” although I was very clearly in a group because there seems to be a tendency to only count travel groups as groups if they include a man, but that’s for a subsequent paragraph to discuss.

The trip was beautiful but unfortunately there was one minor incident that until I started to write this post, I didn’t even realize how much it bothered me. On our way out of a park we’d driven to to see Catorce Colores, one of the most beautiful views of my life, a man working the entrance stopped our car. We’d already paid him the 30 peso fee but we were polite and friendly as we’d been taught to be all of our lives.

He told us about how his grandmother was one of the first people to live in his village nearby and read us a poem he’d written about a recent holiday they’d celebrated. We listened attentively and complimented him on his writing. People don’t usually read me freshly-written poems and I thought it was all kind of nice.

Then, he asked us if we wanted to sign the guest book. We were in a bit of a hurry and had a lot of driving ahead of us, so to speed things up we decided just to send one of us to sign on behalf of the whole car and I was seated on the side closest to his hut, so I volunteered and followed him the 10 steps or so to the entrance.

I wasn’t worried because I wasn’t in the mindset of being worried. My four friends were a stone’s throw away, I was breathing fresh mountain air, and of course I wanted to remember this trip and this day forever- the chance to preserve it in this book that apparently all the visitors signed was one I wasn’t going to rudely decline. I mean this poor guy, probably about 35 or so, was all alone up here and had just read us a poem.

I scribbled our names and the date and turned to leave though he stood in front of the entrance. I thanked him and said goodbye (the only silver lining to this story is my obviously improving grasp on the Spanish language) but he stayed put. I tried to move past him after a quick beso on the cheek (the greeting everyone does in Argentina) but he grabbed my hips with both his hands and forced his head toward mine.

I pushed him as hard as I could with a firm “¡No!” and obviously startled him enough for him to let me pass, running the short distance to the car, and begging my friend Camille to drive.

The bumpy ride down the mountain on the unpaved road was much more solemn than our way up as we all thought about what had happened, what could have happened, and of course, what we should have done differently.

What would have happened if I hadn’t been strong enough to push him away?

What if I had been on this trip alone?

Did this guy do this to every foreign woman, or maybe just every woman, who agreed to sign his damn book?

Had I somehow given him the wrong idea? I can be very friendly even with people I’m ambivalent towards…

What would I have done and who would I have told if that had escalated?

It triggered some bad memories for me, stories friends of mine have told or memories I’ve lived alongside them. And I don’t doubt my comrades of the car were revisiting the dark experiences they or friends of theirs have lived that they’ve stored away in the farthest corners of their minds, too.

The car ride was long enough for me to do a good bit of processing and my friends in the car made for good company to do a bit of sorting through it all. I found myself using humor, my tried and true defense mechanism, and later, justifying this man’s attempted assault by pitying him for living a lonely and isolated mountain life. 

Now I’m mostly just mad. 

My first week in Buenos Aires, a horrible tragedy was all over the news. Two Argentine women backpacking in Ecuador were missing and then found murdered, yet another case of femicidio, women being killed for the fact of being women.

The coverage of their femicidios was in some cases done horribly, with the focus and essentially the blame placed on the victims and their identities as women traveling “alone”, although they were traveling together. Many feminists and groups took to social media to denounce this victim-blaming, using #NiUnaMenos to draw attention to the fact that there are still men who truly see themselves as entitled to do what they want with the women around them, even to point of killing them in the face of rejection.

“You’re crazy for walking or driving or traveling alone. May one day this stop being “craziness”

“The assassinated backpackers in Ecuador, to the media “traveled alone”. They were two women, adults, traveling together. But still they were “alone.” Alone of what? Lacking whom? They were two. But since they were born women, to be 2 they did not reach. In order to not be “alone”, there was something they lacked… Guess what.” (Mariana Sidoti)

I’m frustrated and hurting, for the many women who are killed every year in femicidios or those living in situations of violence. For those who are raped or assaulted or abused in any of the many forms it manifests itself. I’m hurting for the little girls who grow up thinking it’s normal that men on the street shout things at them and that little boys grow up thinking what they’re doing is normal or in any way, complimentary, when it is, in fact, assault. 

I’m lucky nothing worse happened to me, but I refuse to live in a world where women are treated like objects, possessions, disposable goods, in so many situations in our daily lives. The United States is by no means the exception.

Fight on the patriarchy!

Grace ‘17