Photo by Adarsh on Unsplash
Safety Tax: The Extra Steps Women Take Just to Exist
From route planning to financial costs, women pay a daily safety tax simply to move through the world. This piece names the invisible labour behind staying safe and why it should never be normalised.
Walking home, taking a cab, entering a lift with a stranger, even answering the door can feel like mini risk assessments instead of simple actions. Women learn to run background checks in their heads in seconds: Who is around, what time is it, how isolated is this road, who can be called if something feels off. This constant scanning is not paranoia, it is survival conditioning built from years of stories, warnings and “come home early” messages.
The safety tax starts before stepping out. Outfits are planned not just for style or comfort but for “Can I run in this” and “Will this attract comments”. Bags are chosen based on whether they can fit a pepper spray, power bank and maybe an emergency sanitary pad, because the world expects women to be prepared for everything. Even choosing a place to live or a college or a job often includes a safety filter: commute routes, late working hours, neighbourhood lighting, who else will be around.
Phones become survival tools. Women share live locations with friends or family, send “reached” messages like clocking attendance and fake phone calls become a standard script when an auto or cab ride feels off. Volume buttons are pressed, emergency contacts kept pinned, screenshots of vehicle numbers saved. Apps meant for convenience turn into quiet panic buttons, not because women love being dramatic but because one wrong ride can change everything.
Routes are rarely the shortest, they are the safest. Many women avoid shortcuts, dimly lit streets, underpasses and empty lanes even if it adds ten extra minutes to every journey. Seats are chosen carefully in buses and metros. Women stand near other women, near the driver, near the exit. In cabs they sometimes pretend to be on a call, name landmarks loudly, mention “someone is waiting” even when the house will be empty. Whole schedules get built around daylight. Early mornings and late nights are not just time slots, they are risk zones.
Then there is the emotional tax. The constant “be careful” messages, unsolicited male advice, victim blaming and the endless balancing act between fear and freedom. If something goes wrong, the interrogation often focuses on what she wore, where she went, why she was alone, why she was out “so late”, as if the crime was her existence, not the attacker’s choice. Women grow up learning that any misstep can be used against them, so they overcorrect with extra precautions, rehearsed excuses and backup plans.
The safety tax is also financial. Extra money is spent on cabs instead of cheaper public transport at night, on hostels or housing in “better” localities, on self-defence tools, on safety gadgets and apps. Sometimes jobs, classes or networking events are skipped because getting there and back does not feel safe enough. Opportunities leak away quietly in the name of being sensible, responsible and careful. The world calls it “her choice”. It is often just lack of safe options disguised as choice.
Yet there is also resistance. Women share bad driver numbers in group chats, create city-specific safety lists, warn each other in Instagram stories and review apps not just for food and ambience but for how staff treat women alone. Friends track each other’s rides in real time, send “call me if you need an excuse” messages and step in as fake bosses, partners or relatives when needed. This sisterhood is not a cute side story, it is part of the safety net holding up an unsafe world.
The safety tax exists because the world is still more invested in controlling women’s movements than controlling men’s behaviour. Real change means better street lighting, reliable public transport, police that take complaints seriously, workplaces that provide safe commute options, and legal systems that punish predators swiftly instead of humiliating survivors. Until then, women will continue to do mental math every day, calculating risk like interest on a loan they never agreed to take. The safety tax is not invisible anymore. Naming it is the first step towards refusing to keep paying it in silence.
