Record 73% of adults worldwide say they feel safe walking alone at night, the highest since 2006
Women remain 11 percentage points less likely than men to feel safe, despite overall gains
Gender gaps in perceptions of safety recorded in 104 out of 144 countries surveyed
High-income nations such as the US, Australia and EU members show some of the widest disparities
Report warns that violence reduction policies often protect men more than women without targeted action
More people worldwide say they feel safe walking alone at night than ever before, but a persistent gender gap in feelings of personal safety remains, according to a new paper on global safety.
American analytics company Gallup’s Global Safety Report 2025, released September 18, 2025, surveyed more than 145,000 adults in 144 countries. It found that 73 per cent felt safe — the highest figure since Gallup began measuring in 2006. Yet women consistently reported lower levels of security.
Globally, 67 per cent of women said they feel safe walking alone at night, compared with 78 per cent of men. That 11-point gap persists across more than 100 countries, underscoring how women’s insecurity remains entrenched despite broader improvements. The disparity is widespread, with a gender gap of at least 10 percentage points present in 104 out of 144 countries and territories surveyed.
While women’s sense of safety reached its highest recorded level, one in three still said they did not feel safe in their communities. In 2024, 32 per cent of women reported insecurity, compared with 21 per cent of men.
The report noted that this gap in perceived safety persists regardless of a country’s income or stability. In fact, many high-income countries were found to have the largest gender gaps, suggesting that economic progress alone is not enough to eliminate this inequality. In high-income countries, the divide was often sharpest; the United States, Australia and several European Union member states recorded some of the largest gaps
The US reported a 26-point gender gap in perceptions of safety. This means only 58 per cent of women said they felt safe, compared with 84 per cent of men. If rankings were based solely on the safety perceptions of women, the US would fall from 61st to 77th globally, the report pointed out.
Italy recorded the lowest level among EU women at 44 per cent — a proportion similar to Uganda — despite three-quarters of Italian men feeling secure.
Gallup’s findings are set against high levels of gender-based violence. The report highlighted that while men are more likely to be killed in public violence, women are disproportionately at risk at home: More than half of intentional homicides of women and girls are committed by intimate partners or family members. An estimated 85,000 women and girls were intentionally killed worldwide in 2023 alone, a United Nations report found, with a staggering 60 per cent of these deaths occurring at the hands of intimate partners or family members.
Broader inequalities also shape women’s sense of safety. On average, women still have only three-quarters of the legal rights of men, from restrictions on economic participation to limits on freedom of movement and marriage decisions. Such structural barriers leave them more vulnerable to violence and insecurity, the report said.
Looking at responses by region, South Africa remains the least safe country in the world by perception, with only a third of adults feeling secure. Just 25 per cent of South African women said they feel safe walking alone at night, compared with 43 per cent of men. In response, the country has launched a private sector coalition to address workplace gender-based violence, building on its national strategy on gender-based violence and femicide.
By contrast, Singapore ranked safest worldwide, with almost universal levels of confidence: 97 per cent of women and 98 per cent of men reported feeling safe.
The report, produced with New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, stressed that general violence reduction policies may disproportionately benefit men and called for targeted measures addressing women’s vulnerabilities to foster equality.
“Women, in particular, remain less likely than men to feel secure, a gap that persists across more than 100 countries, regardless of income or stability,” Gallup’s chief executive Jon Clifton noted in his introduction to the report.