[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

In which our correspondent copes with shame at security, hassle in hotel bars and all the other trials of being a female traveller…

A female business traveller has to be adaptable – a bit like those brilliant universal plugs that, with only a little effort, can transform themselves for use wherever you are in the world.

We also need to be flexible, not least when bent double in bathrooms, using all our strength to drag the hairdryer cord out of the drawer under the sink and up towards the mirror to dry our hair in five-second blasts. I’ll be honest, it rarely works out perfectly, and I’ve entered many a meeting room with a flustered bird’s-nest look that draws sideways glances from my super-groomed male colleagues.

Still, I just get on with it. I’ve never been one of those women who complain that it’s a man’s world. As a successful businesswoman, I’ve always seen ladies with that attitude as rather bad losers.

But as I am waiting in the security queue at Gatwick airport, it occurs to me that there are very big differences between male and female business travellers. And going through security can be quite an ordeal for us ladies. Men casually throw their keys and phones on top of their jackets in the little tray, but for women it’s like those dreams when you were at school and you realised you’d forgotten to get dressed, and it is only a matter of time before all the boys notice. I stand in line clutching my small see-through plastic bag with all my secrets on show, my lipstick a potentially deadly weapon, yet the big man in front of me could probably kill a flight attendant with his house keys.

I have often been organised enough to think through the essentials of my grooming routine and have been known to decant large bottles of shampoo into much smaller bottles while waiting for the taxi to the airport. But other times, I have more important things to do. So, yet again, I find myself in Boots. I think I spend most of my airside time in Boots or outlets like it, and have nearly collected enough points to purchase something I don’t want.

Once I’ve bagged up a completely new set of dangerous items, I board the plane and find myself the only woman in business class. This has never bothered me – my ex-husband always said my frequent trips were liberating (although now I know he was referring to how the experience felt for him). But as I sink further into the lie-flat position, it strikes me how odd the situation is. Here I am, lying inches from a man I have never met before, with whom I’m about to embark on a fitful night’s sleep without so much as a smile. If I say hello, they look uncomfortable, as if I’m hitting on them. Yet these same men are all friendliness at the hotel bar days later.

Speaking of hotel bars, there’s another place you won’t find many female business travellers. It seems only Homer Simpson and men can drink alone, and be left alone, in a bar. I am fortunate that I am broad, perhaps you could even say well built, so I might not be the most obvious target for affection. Gone are the days when men approached me in hotel bars assuming I was a prostitute. I can’t say I miss that.

I’ve perfected the “I am not interested in anything at all except the TV above the bar and the exit sign above the door” look. I’ve learnt to be aloof and I’ve learnt to be deaf too. Once a guy dropped his room number into the conversation in the hope I might share mine, so I smiled sweetly and gestured for the bill, then spent the rest of the trip avoiding his floor and any lift that had come from anywhere near it.

Perhaps that’s why someone thought up the idea of women-only hotel floors. While this may sound ingenious, it only feeds the stereotypes of men as sexual predators and women as vulnerable creatures. In the US I have even seen places that charge more for female floors as they may include a lounge or extra toiletries. So not only do we have to stay in a hotel that is so insecure it has dangerous men running up and down the corridors, we have to pay extra to survive the night. And what happens if one night I do need a little help with my hairdryer? Am I to go down to reception and ask to move floors for the night?

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