A study conducted by Plan International Australia and Monash University has revealed young women in Sydney feel the least safe in their city when travelling on public transport in the CBD at night. The study launched in Melbourne in 2016 and has since expanded to include Sydney. It asks women aged 18 and 25 to plot their positive and negative experiences in Sydney’s public spaces on Free to Be, a digital map similar to Google Maps and designed by Plan International. Young women were asked to drop a “good” pin on the locations they felt confident in alone and a “bad” pin on the areas they felt uncomfortable or unsafe in.

Ninety per cent of women have recorded they feel unsafe at night in the CBD, and 92 per cent say they feel uncomfortable taking public transport alone after dark. Almost half of the participants (44 per cent) say they feel uncomfortable taking public transport during the day. Thirty-five per cent of the women who have participated say they always feel unsafe on public transport in the evening, and half say they have experienced street harassment. More than half admit to cancelling plans to go out at night because of safety concerns. “There’s an assumption that Australian cities are safe and welcoming for girls and women. When you have 90 per cent of young women in Sydney telling us the city is unsafe for them at night, and many of those are opting out of going out altogether, it is clear this is certainly not the case,” Plan International Australia CEO Susanne Legena said in an official statement.