Quote from nutmeg:
Women and men have gut instincts. Women will pay attention to their instincts and are more in tune to them than men. Assuming equal knowledge between men and women, a woman may not walk down the dark street because she has been conditioned through other unrelated experiences in life to pay attention to what her gut tells her what decision to make.
Men brush off those feelings, "it's just my imagination" no it's not, somewhere in the psyche, every past experience has come into play for this feeling to surface.