Public and private space

I'm walking alone on the streets of Tegucigalpa every day. 
In the position of being a woman, every day I get observed, measured, put in a category and made into an object. This happens to me wherever I am, be it in the streets of Stockholm or Tegucigalpa. But the experience is not entirely the same. I feel exposed and I feel a little unsafe, but most of all, I feel as if the street does not belong to me, as if I'm intruding. 

The public space is the mans space, and here I can feel it, it becomes something physical, something in the air. I do not belong on the street, I'm on the mans territory. I sometimes find myself feeling as if I want to shrink, get back inside as soon as possible. 
Outside, it seems like the men are everywhere, working, hanging out, it's their space. The women are mostly just passing by, moving from one private sphere to another. 
I have to tell myself, while walking, that the streets belongs to me just as much as they belong to those guys standing there, watching me. 

This idea of masculine and feminine, public and private, is something that I have read about and studied, and associated to in a mostly theoretical manner, but I have never experienced it as strongly and in such a concrete way as here.