“Are you ok with a woman driver?” The man at the airport booking counter asks me.
“Of course, why not”, I quip, incredulity writ large on my face.
Fake incredulity actually, because I am not surprised he asks me the question, nor am I that the other line (waiting for cabs driven by normal drivers - male) is much longer.
Too many people in the real world aren’t ok with the idea of women drivers. “That car is being driven so badly, it must have a woman driver at the wheel”, is a common assumption after all.
I get chatting with the driver, something I never do. Rekha (name changed) has been on the beat for three years now, and she says she earns 50% of what other drivers earn on most days, 80% on days she is lucky. Passengers don’t always deign to get into a woman-driven cab, she finishes off.
It’s a sobering conversation, unsettling perhaps, unsurprising though.
A few days later, I catch up with my good friend M for coffee.
M runs an auto rickshaw aggregation start-up. He has much to say about the business. And one looming question.
“How do we increase the number of women auto drivers in the business, K? I have 50% women users but <1% women drivers. We are struggling to attract women into this line even though we really want to. I am almost tempted to believe women aren’t keen to be in the profession of driving but I know that cannot be true.”
“Yeah that cannot be true,” I agree. “Either they are being warned off the job because of its perceived risks or it has been ingrained in their heads since childhood that they aren’t capable of doing certain jobs. And I would hypothesise it is a mix of both as far as driving is concerned.”
In the US, women form <5% of cab drivers. In the UK, it is around 2%. In Mexico and South Africa too, these numbers are in the low single digits. Uber seems to have skewed the percentages positively for women drivers in some countries, but not by much.
M and I continue discussing the topic at hand for about an hour. And arrive at some pertinent observations.
It isn’t the safest of professions to be in. Cab drivers are exposed to many random customers, road rage, unknown destinations, to name a few.
Worse still, it is perceived to be an “unsafe” and “unsavoury” job for women. Overlay on top of what the woman thinks about the profession, what the society around her tells about the job. “Oh your wife is a driver? Is that what you LET her do, traipsing around the city at odd hours?”
It isn’t the most flexible of jobs. In many face-to-face jobs, women choose to work within a certain radius, giving them access back home quickly. The cleaning and cooking jobs in metro cities are invariably within a radius of reachability and at hours that are convenient, giving women the optionality to rush back to their ‘care-giving’ jobs. For, in our country, women still are the primary care-givers and home-keepers.
Most driving jobs come with a degree of uncertainty. Earnings are dependent on number of trips, hardly fixed-wage jobs. To top it off, women end up earning lower than men because of lower customer preference plus inability to turn up at peak hours or late nights (when wages spike) due to family constraints and societal barriers.
Finally, cab driving is an entrepreneurial venture. It requires an investment, ranging from as big as getting a car on loan to as small as filling up petrol beforehand. More than the money, which is crucial and in many cases not easy-coming for women, it is also about confidence, something women are consciously not fed while growing up. So, how do they suddenly muster the courage to negotiate with family members and third parties to get some upfront money going?
We cannot change the society overnight but cab companies can possibly do something? M pushes me further.
Perhaps. Perhaps, a combination of customised work hours, safety nets, redesigning of the remuneration structure, access to investment, and bounded radio of work might make a difference.
If it is one more avenue of job opportunity for women, everything is worth a try.
What do you think?
P. S. Views strictly personal
Interesting read, Kavitha! Certainly, any job opportunity must not be configured for any particular gender(s). In fact, point 5 reminded me of a piece I had written last year on the auto-rickshaw industry in India (https://arindamupmanyu.substack.com/p/the-auto-equation). As it turns out, formal sector lending is unheard of for auto-rickshaws in big Indian cities - including Delhi. To consider adding a layer of gendered preference of drivers would only increase layered challenges.
Definitely something to think about.
I would agree to most points that you mentioned. I would also like to add the issue of clean public washrooms. Men do not face this issue much as they either decide to use a remote part of the road or are not affected as much by unclean washrooms.
Another one would be run ins with the police. Many auto drivers are at loggerheads with the police and resort to aggressive behaviour to avoid being harassed by the police. Women drivers would be a softer target for police and they might not want to involve themselves in aggressive fights with the police.