My biggest disappointment with Italian culture

Being a traveler is stressful enough as it is, but to be a woman as well adds an unfair amount of difficulty when trying to navigate a foreign country. I was expecting to feel uncomfortable with my femininity at times because I know that parts of Europe aren't as progressive as Americans are with feminism, but I was not expecting a few of the occurrences that I came across in my time in Rome. While I don't want to go into full detail explaining some of the positions I, and other women in my study group were put in, I will say this. There were multiple occasions where a man put his entire body in front of mine to obstruct my path. I was sexually harassed numerous times and felt relatively unsafe more than once. The scariest part about this is that I never experienced any of this at night, it all happened in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of people, and I was never alone or in a vulnerable position. This behavior is just simply tolerated on that part of the world. It is 100% okay for a man to objectify a woman just because they want to. Nobody ever seemed disturbed by anything that happened to me or the other women I traveled with but the other students in my study group. I know for a fact that if something like that were to happen at home, it would be a problem with everybody involved, the situation would not have been ignored, and I also would have had a form of self protection to ward off any predators, but women in these areas don't have that privilege. Women all over the world don't have the support from the public the way we do here, not in America in general, but in Portland Oregon. I have never felt so small then I did in these instances, and I am proud to say that I am a woman in a progressive state that sees this behavior is not okay. I pray for women all around the world who don't have this privilege and I can only hope that the world will change.