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Safe rides: female fares only

Robert Tait

Iranian taxi company breaks ranks to enlist women cabbies for the first time

Tehran: The taxi driver who tried to molest passenger Marzieh Khatoon Shariati did not know what he was setting off. Assuming her to be easy prey as she travelled with her infant son in the back of his cab, he pulled up at an isolated spot and suggested things other than travel. Instead, he was overpowered as Ms. Shariati, deploying skills honed as a karate instructor, put him in a stranglehold and ordered him to drive on.

The experience inspired Ms. Shariati, 48, to become one of Iran's first woman taxi drivers in a pioneering scheme allowing women entry to an exclusively male preserve, while paradoxically reinforcing the country's official bias towards gender segregation.

She is one of 20 full-time women drivers recruited for a new service dedicated to female passengers.

Taxi Bisim Banovan (Ladies' Wireless Taxi) has been formed to provide a safe environment for female travellers in Tehran, where an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 women use private cabs each day.

No male passengers are allowed and only female job applicants are accepted. Preference goes to those who are married or are family breadwinners. The telephone operators are all women, some of them multilingual to cater for foreign passengers.

All the directors are men. But they proudly hail their enterprise as meeting women's need to travel free from fear of attack or harassment.

The initiative comes against a backdrop of rising instances of rape and sexual assault. The police say 30 per cent of offences are committed by men working as taxi drivers.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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