WOMEN have been driving yellow cabs
in New York since the 1940s, but 99% of drivers are male. Even among drivers of
cars booked by phone or online, only 4% are women. That may change with the
launch of SheTaxis, an app that lets female passengers insist on female
drivers, and vice versa.
It will be available in New York
City (where it will be called “SheRides”), Westchester and Long Island, and the
firm plans to expand to other cities. Stella Mateo, the founder, is betting
that quite a few women are nervous and weary of getting into cars driven by
men. The service may also appeal to those whose religious beliefs forbid them
to travel with unrelated men. Each driver will wear a pink pashmina. Men who
ask for a ride will be directed to another car service.
Similar services thrive in India,
South Africa and several Middle Eastern cities. Some Brazilian and Mexican
cities offer women-only public-transport programs known as “pink transport”.
Japan has had women-only railway carriages on and off since 1912. Known as hana
densha (flower trains), they offer a haven from the gropers who make rush
hour in Tokyo so disagreeable. Women-only hotel floors are popular, too.
But SheTaxis faces two speed bumps.
One is practical. Demand has been so great that the firm has had to decelerate
its launch until it can recruit 500 drivers. The other obstacle is legal. By
employing only female drivers, SheTaxis is obviously discriminating against
men. Since anti-discrimination law is not always applied with common sense,
that may be illegal. And there is no shortage of potential litigants. Yellow
cabbies are furious at the growth of online taxi firms such as Uber. “It’s not
hard to imagine a guy...filing suit,” says Sylvia Law of New York University
Law School. SheTaxi’s defence would probably be that its drivers are all
independent contractors.
Because the firm caters only to
women, it is discriminating against male customers, too. Is that legal? Angela
Cornell of Cornell Law School thinks there could be a loophole. New York’s
Human Rights Commission could make an exemption on the ground that SheTaxi
offers a service that is in the public interest: women feel safer not getting
into cars with strange men. Women-only colleges are allowed, so why not
women-only cabs? The snag is that some men may also feel safer getting into
cabs with female drivers. A study in 2010 found that 80% of crashes in New York
City that kill or seriously injure pedestrians involve male drivers. Women
drivers are simply better.
