This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 8, 2021 - March 14, 2021

A few months after the birth of her second child, Denise Tan left her job in investor relations. The frequent travelling that came with the job no longer suited her as the primary caregiver of her young children, she tells Digital Edge.

Tan searched online for jobs that were both flexible and safe to make up for the lost income. The only thing she could find was a position as a driver with a ride-hailing service. “The only drawback was that I could not select my passengers, especially during the late night hours,” she recalls.

She was all the more concerned as there was news about road safety incidents in Malaysia with women being hurt or harassed. “This prompted me to think about general road safety for women who are travelling alone,” she says.

And Tan soon realised that this was not a risk unique to Malaysia. According to a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey, Kuala Lumpur is listed alongside cities such as New Delhi, Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok in the list of “top 10 most dangerous transport systems for women”. 

Driver behaviour has also become a major concern for consumers, reports international media intelligence company Meltwater. Malaysia was ahead of Indonesia and Singapore in terms of issues surrounding driver behaviour, with a whopping 84% of social buzz (chatter on social media sites) involving Grab drivers, with words such as “rude”, “dangerous” and “unsafe” bandied about. 

The report, titled “The sharing economy: Exploring the future of transport in Southeast Asia”, notes that this problem can be attributed to the high-pressure and incentive-driven environment the drivers operate in.

Tan decided to do something about it. In 2016, she came up with the idea of creating a safer, all-women, ride-hailing solution and went on to found Riding Pink, a mission-driven company that is less focused on profit than safety. “We create unique services that offer convenience and reliability, as well as being inspired by the stories of hardships from the working mothers on our platform,” she says.

Taking this into consideration, apart from the usual services such as pre-booking rides, recurring rides can also be reserved in advance. This allows the driver to confirm ride schedules and routes weeks or months ahead.

The company also offers PinKIDS, or rides for children. “For parents, it is comforting to know that you can request a preferred driver. After the Movement Control Order (MCO) was announced, we launched a personal shopper and delivery service,” says Tan.

Not having much money, everything was pretty much hands-on for the small team, who accepted bookings, recruited drivers and provided customer service through WhatsApp and Facebook. “Our team of three essentially ran the business over the phone. It was really time-consuming,” she says.

When volume started to pick up, the team shifted its focus to building an app and optimising it. “Now, we have a team of nine and our own in-house tech team,” says Tan.

As the app was all about women, she and her team looked for other services to offer this demographic. They launched a postnatal care search platform that connects mothers or new parents with pre-screened providers of services such as confinement care and postnatal massage.

Like most industries, the ride-hailing business slowed down significantly following the movement restrictions. Prior to this, Riding Pink was steadily growing in terms of monthly trips. “This affected our number of rides. But our driver recruitment continues to grow, most likely due to the economic hardships brought on by the pandemic,” says Tan.

A report on women, ride-hailing and the sharing economy by the World Bank Group and Accenture found that women across the world face higher barriers to paid work and transport compared with men. “They are less likely to participate in paid work, not because they are less educated or qualified, but often because women tend to shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care, or because their ability to work in certain industries (or outside the home at all) is restricted,” it says.

Mobility is immensely important, especially for those without their own transport. As the ride-hailing industry gives women new opportunities, both financial and in terms of mobility, there are major security concerns that warrant a closer look. 

Almost half (40%) of women riders prefer a woman driver when travelling alone or at night. Women drivers are subjected to harassment too.

“General safety plays an important role for any e-hailing company, but I believe Riding Pink prioritises the specific needs of women and children beyond the standards of general safety,” says Tan.

Travelling alone can be an unpleasant and stressful experience for many women. “It is almost natural for us [women] to be on high alert and take more than the necessary precautions to avoid unwanted glances and invasive questions, especially when you are in a car driven by a stranger who is most likely of the opposite sex. I am grateful for our community of Pink drivers and how blessed we are to have a strong platform that empowers women,” she says.

It is not enough to have company policies such as a code of conduct, which most drivers can ignore. Education is the way forward, says Nisha Sabanayagam, programmes and operations manager at All Women’s Action Society (AWAM), an independent feminist non-profit organisation.

AWAM provides support to survivors of gender-based violence. Nisha tells Digital Edge that even though it is early in the year, the organisation has already received a higher number of such reports.

“Gender sensitivity is not about pitting women against men. On the contrary, education that is gender sensitive benefits members of both sexes. It helps them to be aware of stereotypes and generalisations,” she says. 

According to the UN, gender sensitivity training helps to generate respect for the individual regardless of one’s gender. Not only can education help drivers be more aware of what is socially acceptable, it can also help customer service employees respond in a more empathetic way, says Nisha. 

“Empathy is crucial to understand the feeling of being alone and vulnerable. We must note here that violence does not have to be physical, it can also happen in the form of mental, emotional and even financial torture and duress,” she points out.

There have also been cases of “women being assaulted by bigger, stronger men who are later fined negligible amounts” when taken to court. “Governments need to take a strong stand against gender-based violence. One of the more immediate actions that the government can take is to ensure there are laws that comprehensively protect women,” says Nisha. 

The Sexual Harassment Bill needs to be tabled immediately to ensure survivors get “easy access to justice with the least amount of cost”, she adds.

So far, cases have included a single mother who was allegedly raped on her way home in a car that she hired through a ride-hailing app and another woman who was molested by her driver, as reported by The Star. In 2017, following such cases, ride-hailing companies incorporated an emergency button that allowed passengers to alert the police during emergencies, according to the report. 

“This is one way to help prevent cases of harassment from happening, but whether it is effective depends on the situation. Some people freeze in a potentially traumatic experience and may not be able to push the button,” Nisha points out.

Beijing-based Didi Chuxing Tech Co, a transport service with about 550 million users, came up with various solutions to curb similar problems. In late 2018, it was reported that the company would only allow drivers to take late night trips after they had clocked at least six months of service and more than a thousand safe trips. It also came up with a feature that, in the event a ride deviates from the agreed route, alerts the staff so they can be on standby. 

“To support this, companies should ensure drivers are given proper training on gender sensitivity and come properly recommended. An immediate investigation should be carried out once there are complaints,” says Nisha, adding that companies can go a step further by making a police report against the perpetrator.

The focus should not be solely on creating more features. It should be about implementing gender sensitivity training across the board. Although new features can help, ultimately it would go to waste if riders and employees of the company are clueless about societal issues and boundaries.

This issue is not unique to Malaysia or even Asia. In August 2019, ride-sharing company Lyft was hit with seven sexual assault lawsuits, according to technology website thenextweb.com. 

The report says those who had filed the cases alleged that Lyft had “failed to implement the most obvious and straightforward safety procedures in order to address the growing problem of sexual assault” perpetrated by Lyft drivers. And in all these cases, the women were still charged for the ride.

In December that year, ride-sharing giant Uber released its first-ever safety report, revealing that 3,045 sexual assaults had been reported in rides in the US in 2018.

While tech can help to some extent, it is not the only answer. “This is an issue of prevailing gender attitudes exacerbated by technology and the internet. Resolving this issue will not be just about fixing technology but changing social attitudes,” says Dr Rachel Gong, senior research associate at Khazanah Research Institute. 

Her previous research involved gender inequality and unpaid care work. She is currently researching how digital technologies affect society. 

Globally, women are less likely to be online than men. And when they are online, they are less likely to use the internet for economic and political activity, according to the World Wide Web Foundation, a non-profit organisation that fights for digital equality to create a world where everyone can access the web and use it to improve their lives.

“Multiple studies have also found that women are more likely than men to be bullied, harassed or abused online. Women are more likely to be stalked, threatened or doxed online, like the recent example of the Telegram group sharing women’s photos without their consent,” says Gong. 

To dox someone is “drop documents” or reveal private information about them in public forums.

The Telegram porn scandal, which was unveiled by the South China Morning Post, involved the dissemination of child pornography and revenge nude and upskirt images.

Gender mainstreaming requires a lot more public education, awareness and discourse. “Having more women involved in high-level decision-making generally, and in developing tech specifically, is also vital. Otherwise, we wind up with tech that is developed by people who do not prioritise gender equality, and gender biases [within tech] will remain,” says Gong.

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