"More than half of Australian women are scared to walk alone at night. They shouldn't have to be."

Walking down your street — or any street — after dark shouldn’t be scary, but for many women it is.

They clutch their keys between their fingers, remove their headphones, check over their shoulders, and why? Because they’re terrified that if they don’t, they might not make it to the front door.

I’ve done it. We all do it. It makes sense.

We’re programmed to take precautions and told that if we don’t, that if we let our guard down for a second and something goes wrong — which too often it does — we had it coming. Noone has it coming.

More than half of Australian women feel unsafe walking home alone at night, according to a new report by Community Council for Australia.

To put that in perspective, nearly 80 per cent of Australian men simply don’t.

The majority of men don’t feel their pulses quicken for those few blocks between the tram stop and the front gate, or speed up every time they need to cross through the park, nor should they. Nor should anyone.

"Of course, there are times when I have been scared; when I am scared."

I was lucky enough to grow up in an inner city suburb of Melbourne, which means I've never lived more than a few kms stroll from the CBD — it also means I didn't get my license until I was well into my twenties.

I've been traipsing through the same suburbs at dusk, dark and, if I'm honest, occasionally at dawn since I was a teenager with a lop-sided fringe and way too much eyeliner on.

I know how it feels to stroll home on a Summer's night completely pissed, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, with a terrible song blasting through my headphones.

It feels great. It's honestly one of my greatest pleasures in life.

Sometimes, and much to the dismay of my neighbours, I even yell along to my iPod. Heck, sometimes I still stop in the deserted park, swing on the swing and belt out the lyrics to Third Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life. It's very cathartic.

And more often than not, I don't feel scared. At all.

I know maybe I should and there are very real reasons to be. I've had it drilled into me since birth, just like everyone else.

I'm also well aware that if something were to happen to me while I was out walking my dog at 2am, I'd be probably be told it was my own fault.

Of course, there are times when I have been scared; when I am scared.

Like when I was 16 and a man followed off the bus. Or when I was 25 and a man followed me all the way to my apartment and watched as I fumbled over security pad, desperately trying to get inside.

Or whenever some creep stops me just to ask an inane question or yells something obscene at me from their car window.

Riding my bike at sunset. Sue me. Source: Supplied

Or when an innocent woman, only a few years older than myself, was murdered the next suburb over after a quiet night out.

You know what else I know? That violence against women in Australia is disgustingly commonplace.

That a woman a week still dies as a result of domestic violence.

And that that woman is most likely to be killed by her male partner in her own home.

And that when I was sexually assaulted, it was by someone I'd known for years.

There's an incredibly bleak irony in the fact that so many of us are terrified to enjoy public space when it's in private that we are most under threat.

Being a woman in Australia shouldn't be scary, but it is. I know it is. But being scared also doesn't make you any safer.

Women have the right to exist. To go outside at night. To wear what they want and feel the joy of stumbling home, scrolling through their Instagram accounts without wondering if every lurking shadow is someone about to threaten their life.

The reality is that awful things do happen, but telling women to change how they act to protect themselves only confines them.

It only makes them frightened.