Egypt’s women-only taxi service promises protection from male drivers

Egypt’s Pink Taxi – a new service marketed as a safe way for women to travel in Cairo, where sexual harassment and assaults have become increasingly commonplace – is surprisingly neither pink, nor a taxi.

“This is not a taxi. It’s a limousine service,” says Reem Fawzi, the founder of the service. The name is simply marketing, she adds.
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Appearing on influential TV talk shows, Fawzi promises Egyptian women “privacy and safety” from male taxi drivers. “Just enter ‘taxi driver’ into Google [in Egypt] and it will suggest ‘taxi driver kills’; ‘taxi driver rapes’; ‘taxi driver steals’,” she says.

Fawzi hopes to eliminate some of the risks for women and families travelling in public: Pink Taxi is operated exclusively by female drivers, and must be ordered in advance. Customers are required to send in a scan of their national ID “for the safety of the driver,” Fawzi adds. Details