Struggle to find women drivers delays highly demanded cab service

The debut of a livery car service providing women drivers for female passengers in the New York City area has stalled over lack of a sufficient number of drivers and a bigger-than-expected demand. The service determined that demand would outstrip the capacity of the 100 female drivers currently available to fulfill requests. Less than 3 percent of the city’s about 115,000 licensed taxi, livery and limousine drivers are women, and that can be a problem for women who are reluctant to get into a cab alone with a male driver because of safety concerns or religious and social mores.

Why don’t we have female drivers exclusively for female riders? It would be nice to have that choice.

Stella Mateo, SheTaxis—SheRides creator

The owner of the service, which will feature female drivers wearing hot pink pashmina scarves, said it would provide safety and convenience to women, as well as economic opportunity. Access to female drivers, she said, would particularly help some Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women whose religious beliefs prohibit them from traveling alone with unrelated men. She said that encouraging women to drive would also allow them to become small business owners in an industry that has no gender pay gap and also provides flexibility for working mothers.

It’s having one more opportunity in our whole world, in all of our interactions everywhere, to know that I can choose to have a woman if I want.

Patricia Gatling, human rights commissioner

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