An authorized "Pink Taxi" in Puebla, which only picks up women.
I’ve lived in Mexico City for two-plus years without a car. In that time, I’ve only had female cab drivers twice — once coming back from the bus station in 2009, and once a few weeks ago, when I was returning from a doctor’s appointment in Polanco.
Apparently more than 800 female drivers work in the city, according to an article published last year in Milenio. A 2008 article from Inside Mexico indicated that there could be thousands more, but the overwhelming majority aren’t officially registered.
As a woman I’d love to see more female cab drivers, especially in crowded areas where there are no taxi sitios. It’s still not safe in Mexico City for single women to hail cabs off the street. Female customers traveling alone can be robbed, beaten or raped.
I was really interested in how this female cabbie got her job, so we struck up a conversation. To my surprise, she seemed eager to share her story.
The driver’s name was Clara Dominguez, and she said she ended up as a cabbie four years ago after being laid off from her job in sales.
“I did very well in sales — very well,” she said, as we zoomed down Thiers, a busy avenue that connects Polanco to Reforma. “My boss wanted younger women.”
Dominguez’s bosses gave her a good severance package, and when the money started running out, her son got her the job at the taxi sitio. She was not welcomed there. In her first few months on the job, some of the other drivers got together and held a meeting demanding that she be fired. They accused her of being a poor driver and of not knowing her way around the city.
She kept her job, but the drivers ended up passing a statute that banned the hiring of any future women.
I asked her, naively, whether Mexico had any laws against discrimination. She gave me a funny look.
“I’m extranjera,” I explained.
“There are no laws in Mexico prohibiting discrimination against women,” she said, slowly.
Sometimes I forget how machista this country is. It’s frustrating that there aren’t more women cab drivers in a city that’s supposedly so cosmopolitan, and in a city where women desperately need jobs. And in the larger scheme of things, it’s sad that women here need female cabbies to feel safe. I’m lucky enough to have several taxi sitios programmed into my phone, but they cost double what you’d pay on the street. Sometimes I’m stuck in an area where hailing a cab off the street is my only option. I climb in and start praying.
A few years ago, the city of Puebla instituted the women-only “Pink Cabs,” designed specifically for women. (That’s a photo of them above.) They look ridiculous, but at least they guarantee that women travelers won’t be beaten and robbed. Mexico City has tried a few times to get a similar project off the ground but it hasn’t gotten anywhere.
The next time I’m in an area where I need a ride, I would much rather call Clara.
She was nice enough to let me take a photo of her.
Clara Dominguez, one of Mexico City's few female taxi drivers
I worked for 6 months for a very famous Mexican architect and he made my life miserable. He wanted a young assistant and as he told everyone I was old enough to be his mother. I finally quit, but letting him and everyone associated with him exactly what a “pig” he was….Machismo still lives and I hope not for ever.
Love the pink cabs…bravo!
Ugh, Norma. I’m sorry. I’m glad you moved on. On the pink cabs: I wish we had something like it in Mexico City, at least in areas where taxi crime against women is thought to be high, like the Centro Histórico. Or hopefully one of the newspapers will report soon on whether these ID cards have made a dent in street-cab robberies.
Unfortunately that is still the situation… on the XXI century! It makes me so mad. I am appalled every time I return home. One of the last times I went back to my hometown, I decided I wanted to stop at a bakery or “panaderia” and bring a bag of yummy sweet bread home with me (I was travelling by car). After all the nostalgia and the wonderful time visiting friends and family, I got smacked in the face with reality, literally: “Se busca ayudante. Chica joven y soltera, no mayor de 25 anos”. That was their “help wanted” sign on the door of the bakery, literally translated to “Help wanted. Young, single girl, no older than 25 yrs old”. Because hiring only young, single girls really makes a difference when making bread.
To make matters worse, I am not convinced that younger generations are learning from the mistakes of the past. Just a week ago there was a news story about a high school girl who found out she had been raped because her attackers took video of the act on their cell phones and they were passing this video around their classmates. The girl had gotten too drunk and around 7 of her classmates took advantage of her. When TV cameras interviewed other classmates from her school, a boy said straight to the camera, nonchalant: “it is her fault for turning them on, and it’s her fault she later realized she couldn’t handle them all at once”.
It is disgusting and embarrassing that in a country as rich in culture and resources as Mexico is, they are still living three centuries behind the rest of the world.
Gaby: Yeah, I see signs like that all the time, most often requesting women under a certain age. The soltera thing seems a little blatant.
Clara and I were talking about when things might change in Mexico, and she said it has to start with the parents. Mothers must raise their sons to be as respectful to other women as they are to their mothers. And not just that, but to stop treating women like fragile flowers who can only handle certain tasks. (i.e., motherhood and cooking.) I feel like the rape situation you mentioned continues to happen in the United States, except perhaps kids aren’t so brazen about it, bragging on a video.
I believe as well that it has to start in the way kids are raised. I love my Mexico, my culture, my language, and I want nothing more than to go back, but every time I go I have to deal with older men calling me “nina” and ordering me around. You know what industry I work in, and when Mexican (male) clients show up, specially those that grew up in Mexico, treat me and the other women in the office the same way. This can only be solved through education, both in schools and at home. Mexico City seems so cosmopolitan, a truly global city, and yet there is so much to do in order to truly bring the city, and the country, caught up with the XXI century.
enlightening article- thank you for posting it.
Wow – how sad. I want to let your readers know that not everywhere in Mexico is like this (Mexico gets so much bad news, I’d hate for it to take off in casual blogs)…. I take taxis a lot, when a combi isn’t leaving or arriving with my schedule, and have never had a problem with it. I’ve only had a few woman drivers, but every single driver has been professional and I have never felt threatened. Only once did I -almost- tell a driver to slow down. Other than that I’ve never felt unsafe or felt worried about anything. And this is in Michoacán, which is generally classified as a war-zone. 🙂 Drivers in my area are very respectful, know me by name, wave to me when they see me jogging, and give me the correct prices always. And, it is actually cheaper than driving in many cases (I also haven’t driven in years).
Hi Marie: You make a great point. Of course I don’t want to imply that all Mexico is unsafe. I’ve never had any trouble with cabs once I leave Mexico City, and I’ve taken street cabs in Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Morelia and the beach cities. No problems there.
That said, it *is* still considered dangerous for a woman traveling alone in Mexico City to take a cab off the street. There are other options — public transportation is safe and efficient, and of course authorized taxi sitios here in DF are safe. I’ve seen news reports that urge tourists to stay away from ANY cabs, and that’s totally wrong. It’s really just a problem with the street cabs, and even then the risk arises mostly when you’re a woman traveling alone.
I’m not sure if you saw, but I linked to an El Universal article from a few years ago that indicated that taxi crime against single women was rising. I’d love to see a follow-up article, especially since the government mandated ID cards for all the cabs last year. I wonder if that’s made a dent in things.
My aunt and uncle live in mexico city and from what i’ve seen and what they confirm – there are no laws against discrimination what so ever – to women, senior citizens (i think your considered senior if your over 35 or so – at least for most jobs), people of color (black, indio, mestizo). and now the drug wars…..is it a wonder that mexico does not and most likely will not ever progress to a place/country where their citizens want to stay and live with their families vs. risking their lives and families lives to go to another country illegally.
Well there’s optimism for you!
There are INDEED laws against discrimination here….but as can be expected in a developing country; sometimes things are slow to evolve and change. If you’d been here in the 80’s you’d see just how far Mexico City and the country have come.
After many visits of 6 weeks to 6 months in Mexico since 2000 and with nearly 5 years living in Guanajuato I have only ONCE had a woman taxista — September, 2010 in Cordoba. I use taxis a lot at home in G’to and have never felt unsafe though on a few occasions I have had grossly inflated prices demanded of me. (G’to does not have meters; it has zones.)
I had the distinct “pleasure” of riding with a female cabbie here in Mexico City once. She was the fastest, most agressive person on the road that evening. The way she strung together swear words has left an impression on me to this day!
There should be more women cabbies…but I was told that the same risks you run as a woman hailing a cab on the street, they run as well. Sadly for most it’s not an attractive career path.
Nice work, Lesley. Actually there are laws against discrimination in Mexico. Unfortunately, they are no more assiduously observed than any other laws here.
I love Mexico City and I don’t feel any less safe there than I do in New York, but I do take more precautions not only because it is a machista society, but because I am an extranjera. I would love to be able to hail a pink taxi, in Mexico or the US! I take cabs off the street when I visit the city and just hope I am not one of the small percent of women that get beaten, robbed or worse. In any large city I worry about being vulnerable or putting myself in a situation that is to my disadvantage and slightly more so in Mexico, not necesarily because of machismo but just self preservation in general. I feel perfectly safe hopping into a cab in Cancun, where I live but I would feel better in a pink taxi, especially late at night.
Dear Lesley,
thanks for your article. Living in Mexico City for 2 years now I have thought so many times: Why aren’t there any more femaly cab drivers? It’s a huge problem! My Mexican boyfriend and my suegra have warned me many times: Don’t take a cab from the street. and I think they are right. A lot of times it’s better to choose the safe way and call a taxi from a trusted taxi sitio.
I hope things will change, but knowing Mexico it will take its time.
P.S: In two years I never had a female taxi driver.
wow. I know there are so many things I take for granted, but I forget just how many sometimes.
I lived in Tijuana for six months and had to take taxis every day to get to “La Frontera” (the border) because I worked in San Diego. Some tried to rip me off.. One time I had to order the taxi driver to pull over because he was cheating me with the faster moving meter in his cab. So I walked home the remainder after jumping out of his taxi. I had one that was so insistent that he spoke better English than my Spanish (ha ha….) and so I let him screw up and basically ended the conversation in Spanish, while all along he insisted that I was going to a Doctor or Dentist rather than just going HOME. I’ve had some very friendly ones, not so friendly ones and the best were the repeat ones that I didn’t have to navigate the trip home and could just sit back and relax while they traveled up the winding, hillside that I lived on. I’m very fair and those of us that were fair would all look sympathetically at one another because we were all treated “differently” as if we were American tourists. I had never seen a female taxi driver, that would have been interesting. Women are treated much differently over there than in the states.