$10 Better Spent:

Every Uber ride I take is under 12 minutes long. I could walk instead of taking any of these rides. But I'll choose to get an Uber every time. 

My Uber rides are about $10, and happen between the hours of 11 PM and 5AM. Sometimes I'm drunk or wearing very little, sometimes I'm not.  

A 2-kilometre walk isn't far, but a $10 Uber isn't expensive. 

When I choose to take Ubers instead of walking, I'm part of a glaring security statistic – one third of Australian women avoid walking alone at night because they fear for their safety, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. 

Am I being dramatic? Is it really that bad? Why am I scared? 

Maybe it's because I got chased down King Street – he was running, I was running, he called me a whore, I flipped him off. I ran to my hotel, my lockable room. I didn't know who he was – he emerged from an alley and had an urge to terrorise the women of Melbourne. He would've picked anyone in a dress who went past at that moment.  

Maybe it's because I ducked into the ladies' in Parliament station, only for the staring man from the City Loop to follow me in. The strap of my top had broken on the train, and he oh-so-inconspicuously wanted to check if I was ok. He only left when another girl entered the bathroom.  

Maybe it's because I get yelled at by a Chap-Lapper every time I'm on Chapel Street, or was groped by a club security guard, or heard there's a vigil for a friend-of-a-friend who went missing.  

"Not all men" harass women, but80% of women's assailants are male, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. It's an issue because there are enough men who do.  

Most of my friends have similar stories, so we get Ubers together. It's an end-of-the-night expense any of us would be happy to shout. I wonder if there's a world where we don't need to pay for an Uber. 

What we currently have in place are mitigation techniques–keys between fingers, a couple of self-defence classes, big scary friends and $10 Ubers. Femicides occur weekly, and 1 in 2 women have been sexually harassed in their lives in Australia, so these techniques don't go far. 

Until every son is educated, every dad is realigned, and every male friend is unassuming, we will remind you we feel unsafe. 

While we work on these issues, I've got a short-term solution. One that I've started asking the men around me. 

Pay for our Ubers.  

It's only $10. See a girl you like? Give her money for an Uber instead of buying her a drink. Ditching your female friend early in the night? Transfer her $10. Worried about your daughter going out on the town? There's a $10 solution for that. 

Until I feel I do not need to take an Uber for a distance I could've walked, I will ask you to pay for my ride. Men are responsible for my night-walk anxiety, and I am fine to let them pay for it. 

Chloe Kopec, 2025