Respectability in women’s solo travel: a critical conceptualisation

This conceptual paper explores how respectability, as a social logic, shapes women’s solo travel. It argues that concerns about safety and risk are merely a surface manifestation of a deeper debate about who is a proper traveller. The paper first defines respectability and distinguishes it from legality and legitimacy. It explains how respectability, through everyday carrot and stick mechanisms, transforms social expectations into conditional freedom and internalised self-discipline. The analysis then focuses on how women are interpreted as more or less respectable in solo travel from surface, relational and temporal dimensions. It further reveals how institutions, cultural norms, and digital platforms govern respectability by determining whose presence is more easily identified and trusted. Finally, the paper offers implications for tourism practices and wider society. Overall, it calls for shifting the cost of being read as respectable from individual women to broader support and shared responsibility.