Why women travel more: consumption, showing off, and an escape without photos

Why women travel more: consumption, showing off, and an escape without photos

Whoever opens the debate argues that on the organized trips they have taken and in English courses outside Spain, there have always been more women than men. From that impression arises an uncomfortable question — why more women than men have that obsession with traveling — and at least four answers that don't fit together. All are supported by something. None closes the issue.

Travel as consumption: the photo weighs more than the destination

The most repeated argument is not biological, it's advertising. Travel would have ceased to be a journey and become a showcase: what matters is not the place, but the image uploaded from it. Some summarize it harshly: if they couldn't take photos and publish them, many of those people wouldn't be interested in traveling in the least. The question that accompanies that thesis is whether the average traveler is interested in the monuments, culture, gastronomy, or history of the place, or only in the selfie with the monument behind.

A specific case cited: someone returns from the Philippines and estimates that, of the young people they encounter, approximately half would not have traveled without Instagram. Another adds that travel is a hobby that doesn't require talent, unlike music, photography, or sports. And a third concludes: today you can tour Tokyo better on video than in person. Consumption, in this reading, is not the ticket: it's the story of the ticket.

Do men accumulate assets and women experiences?

The second line of analysis is the most contentious. It is argued that men anchor themselves in a territory and work to build assets, while women seek experiences; that the former dreams of building and the latter of projecting their image, because their time window to do so would be shorter. The thesis is accompanied by the classic anthropological argument: in tribes, women were exchanged between groups to avoid endogamy, which would have left less attachment to the homeland and a greater tendency to move.

It should be said that those who defend this label it themselves as a generalization, with honorable exceptions in both sens. Others refute it from another angle: men travel just as much or more, but almost none can monetize it and therefore don't show it off. Only the famous person who makes money from their travels publishes the catalog.

Is traveling a way to escape from oneself?

Here the conversation turns literary. Peter Pan is cited, who flees from his own shadow because he doesn't want to grow up, and the writer Ramiro Pinilla is cited — merchant sailor and author of the renewing current of Spanish narrative — who stated that traveling "is an escape, like trying to fill a void." Pinilla spent his entire life in Getxo. The anecdote is not minor: the man who best defined travel as escape never moved from home.

The most repeated diagnosis: they can't stand themselves, they can't bear silence or an afternoon stroll without stimulation, and so they flee forward. A nuance is added that reduces the romanticism: while traveling, loneliness is less noticeable. Against that, the reply of those who travel out of genuine curiosity, without social media and without publishing anything, reminds us that before the internet every destination was a real discovery and not the confirmation of six hundred photos already seen.

Travel proselytism and the carbon footprint nobody asks about

A recurring point of friction: social pressure. Saying you don't like traveling is met with a look of bewilderment, as if giving up the plane made you uncultured. Some analyses take it to the extreme: the petty traveler proselytizes because they need to justify the expense, and in that same conversation nobody asks about the carbon footprint of the alucinación. The contradiction between environmental awareness and cheap flights is pointed out mercilessly, and some, half-jokingly, point to cheaper flights as one of the reasons why the distant weekend has become a mass habit.

There is also a defense of the nearby: Spain has everything and often more and better than what you go to see abroad, with hundreds of destinations pending before crossing a border. There the disagreement is total: some see travel as the best life experience available; others, an expense without substance.

Who pays for the alucinación: couple, calendar, and bank account

The most down-to-earth part of the matter is money. There are stories of marriages where negotiating vacations becomes a tug-of-war: one spouse plans the getaway and the other suffers it before, during, and after. Eurodisney is mentioned as an example of an expensive and dispensable destination. In those cases, the alucinación is not an individual hobby: it's a marital obligation with a bill.

And underneath remains the question that nobody fully answers: how many of those trips are sustained with one's own money and how many with someone else's. The matter is left noted, not resolved.

The missing data

If the mobile phone disappeared tomorrow, how many of those trips would still happen? The estimate circulating, 50%, no one has measured it. And the other 50%, either.