Vertical Markets

SheTravel website

by Mark Rowe

The coach and trainer Tracey Livingston blogged that she meant to record a video of when she and her colleagues passed through the Israeli checkpoint into Palestine. Instead they whizzed through the checkpoint without stopping or even as much of a glimpse from the Israeli soldiers, and were officially in Palestine.

She wrote: “Here we all were: a #33 week pregnant American, a German-Brit and an Israeli-Arab, driving through the rolling mountains and villages of Palestine, listening to a mix of Justin Bieber and ’80s music.

“For the next week, me and my rather large belly worked on a corporate engagement with over 100-plus employees, led seven stakeholder groups, had 1:1 interviews with their top GMs and held a final presentation for Bashar Masri, the founder of Rawabi City (which is the first planned city in Palestine in the last 1,400 years).

“It was an intense and rewarding week. We were exploring new terrain in human development, training, conflict resolution and change management in one of the most recognised conflict zones in the world.”

As Tracey’s blog post, #33 Weeks Pregnant in Palestine, shows, while admitting that there’s a taboo around ‘being pregnant, traveling and working long hours’, a woman can still follow her ‘inner compass’.

That’s one of the pages on a new website, SheTravel, set up by the medical and security advisory consultancy Northcott (NGS), by Anna-Liisa Tampuu, Head of Risk Analysis at NGS. She was featured in Professional Security magazine last year, for her female-only workshops about travel safety, acknowledging that while some risks during business travel (kidnapping, petty theft, upset stomachs) can happen to anyone regardless of gender, some risks (unwanted sexual attention) affect women particularly, and require not only good security advice beforehand but an understanding of the culture of the place visited. Hence SheTravel, a website which offers some free content, but also to subscribers content such as guides to countries from Afghanistan and Algeria to Vietnam; and a forum where women can ask about things they might not feel comfortable about raising with their (male) security or travel manager. Assuming that the manager would have the answer. Such as; what clothes is it sensible to wear? What behaviour that’s taken for granted in Britain might cause surprise or even offence abroad? How readily available are women’s hygiene products?

See the May 2019 print issue of Professional Security for our interview with Anna-Liisa Tampuu at Northcott’s Mayfair office.

Picture by Mark Rowe; statue, outside Guildhall, City of London.

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