Photo: www.carscoopgirl.blogspot.ro/2013_05_01_archive.com
A new livery service created for customers who desire exclusively female drivers will start on the 16th September in New York City, Westchester County and Long Island. Designed as an app, the new service aims to serve women who may feel uncomfortable being driven by men or who simply prefer the company of other women.
The service was started by Stella Mateo, the husband of the founder of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, an industry group representing 30,000 taxi and livery drivers. According to the New York Times, the app will ask potential riders if there is a woman in their party. If not, they will be automatically redirected to other car services. Initially available through Apple, the service will eventually be made available on Android services as well. The app will dispatch drivers sporting hot pink pashmina scarves.
Mother of two, the founder of the service says she could have used a female driver to help shuttle them to soccer, field hockey, basketball and gymnastics practices when they were growing up. Ms. Mateo added that the SheTaxis, which will be called SheRides in New York City because of regulations barring it from using “taxi” in its name, is also a way to help women join an industry that has long been dominated by men.
After all, in specs, there is definitely a lot of room for such services. According to International Women’s Day, 170 out of 46,000 New York City taxi drivers are women. Only about 2 percent of all US taxi drivers (about 225,000 in all) are female. In New York state the figure is even lower with about 1.1 percent.
Moreover, it would seem there is an international flurry startups in women-only cab companies. One of the first was London’s Pink Ladies, a company formed in 2005 after a girl was murdered by someone posing as a taxi driver. On the heels of that, two female entrepreneurs-both with daughters of their own - launched an eye-catching fleet of pink cabs driven by women for exclusively female passengers.
In 2006, a Pink Ladies branch opened in Moscow and similar ventures have been making headlines in countries such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates and India. According to the source, female taxi driver were more numerous in the 1960s, but many left he industry in the following two decades when high crime rates made the job considerably more dangerous. But as we can observe, it would seem things are about to change.
Mother of two, the founder of the service says she could have used a female driver to help shuttle them to soccer, field hockey, basketball and gymnastics practices when they were growing up. Ms. Mateo added that the SheTaxis, which will be called SheRides in New York City because of regulations barring it from using “taxi” in its name, is also a way to help women join an industry that has long been dominated by men.
After all, in specs, there is definitely a lot of room for such services. According to International Women’s Day, 170 out of 46,000 New York City taxi drivers are women. Only about 2 percent of all US taxi drivers (about 225,000 in all) are female. In New York state the figure is even lower with about 1.1 percent.
Moreover, it would seem there is an international flurry startups in women-only cab companies. One of the first was London’s Pink Ladies, a company formed in 2005 after a girl was murdered by someone posing as a taxi driver. On the heels of that, two female entrepreneurs-both with daughters of their own - launched an eye-catching fleet of pink cabs driven by women for exclusively female passengers.
In 2006, a Pink Ladies branch opened in Moscow and similar ventures have been making headlines in countries such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates and India. According to the source, female taxi driver were more numerous in the 1960s, but many left he industry in the following two decades when high crime rates made the job considerably more dangerous. But as we can observe, it would seem things are about to change.
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