A nightly hope shared by many women
It is 10 pm, and booking a cab comes with an unspoken wish — a safe ride home. For many women, that hope often includes a simple thought: what if there was an option to choose a woman driver? Despite repeated claims of women empowerment by ride-hailing platforms, female cab drivers remain an extreme rarity across Indian cities, including Bengaluru.
A month-long investigation involving airport cab counters, conversations with Ola, Uber and Rapido drivers, and interviews with all-women cab services reveals a stark gap between claims and ground reality.
“People stare like I’m doing something wrong”
“When people see I’m a woman driving, they gossip,” says Seema, a 34-year-old Uber driver who has been on the platform since 2018. She adds that some men deliberately speed past her car to mock her. To avoid attention, she covers her car windows with curtains.
But the resistance begins much earlier. Sheeba, Delhi City Head at Sakha Consulting Wings, an all-women cab service, explains that families are often the first barrier. “If she’s unmarried, they say driving is a man’s job. If married, they ask who will look after the children.”
Driving, commonly learnt informally by men, is actively denied to many women. Even those who train professionally face judgement as “irresponsible” mothers or wives.
A system not designed for women
Infrastructure worsens the challenge. “Functional women’s washrooms are rare. Men can stop anywhere; women cannot,” Sheeba notes. Long workdays of 14–16 hours, expected by aggregator platforms, are incompatible with women who shoulder unpaid domestic labour.
Survey data from major cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR shows that over 90% of respondents have never been assigned a woman driver on Ola, Uber or Rapido.
Women drivers make up barely 1–2% of app-based fleets, largely because platforms lack dedicated training pipelines.
Safety concerns push women out
When women drivers report misbehaviour, support is inconsistent. “Sometimes the company blocks our ID instead,” Seema says, pointing to lack of transparency and protection. Many women who joined with her have since quit.
Among major platforms, only Rapido responded, citing the onboarding of 1,000 women drivers through a government partnership. However, commuters say such drivers remain rarely visible on the ground. Ola and Uber did not respond.
Training, funding and visibility gaps
According to Vandana Suri, founder of Taxshe, training a woman driver takes six to eight months and costs up to ₹1 lakh. Limited funding, long training cycles and lack of investor interest restrict scale. Women-led businesses globally receive just 2% of private equity funding.
The road ahead
Experts agree that India does not lack women willing to drive — it lacks affordable training, safety infrastructure, policy support and platform accountability. Until these gaps are addressed, women will remain exceptions on Indian roads, not the norm.