Gender, walking, and tourism: Femininities walking the tourist space

Walking has been recently discussed in the academic literature not only as a form of mobility but also as a form of tourism (Simeoni & De Crescenzo, 2019; Stevenson & Farrell, 2018) as well as in the context of mobility during traveling (Brown et al., 2020). However, female walking mobility has received far less attention than the one that is coded as male (Männistö-Funk, 2021). This neglect of the female experience of mobility is manifested in two ways: 1) through the “neutral” narratives of mobility that may not be coded as masculine but they actually are, as mobility is analyzed from and for a masculine viewpoint, and 2) through the bigger chunk of academia that has been dedicated to the mobility that is coded and discussed as masculine in comparison to the one about the feminine mobility. Οn this ground, the current thesis, adopting a transfeminist point of view, aimed to explore the way that the space of walking tourism and walking in the context of tourism is experienced by different gender identities in Italy. In particular, the motivations, constraints and the way that gender identity affects walking practices with regards to walking tourism and walking in the context of tourism were examined through a two-section online questionnaire, that included both closed and open-ended questions. The online questionnaire was posted on Facebook groups relevant to walking in Italy and was filled by 215 group members belonging in different groups. The quantitative analysis of the closed-ended questions with the use of chi-square tests showed no significance difference among gender categories on the above-mentioned variables, neither concerning walking tourism nor walking in the context of tourism. However, the thematic analysis that was applied on participants’ answers to the open-ended questions, revealed three main themes regarding the experience of walking tourism: constraints, safeguarding strategies and restricted space, time and options. All three themes occurred from women’s experiences, with constraints faced (usually fear for safety and vigilance) leading to the adoption of safeguarding strategies (mainly avoidance of “unsafe” practices, places and time periods) and, thus, to a restricted “space” for women to experience walking in tourism.