Ladies Who Cab

Betsy Morais

Photograph by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty

Every day, as many as six hundred thousand cab rides are taken in New
York City. Stella Mateo, who is starting a women-only cab service,
estimates that sixty per cent of those passengers are female. Women and
cabs share in an enduring romance. In a taxi, a woman can feel
independent and safe; she can shed the defensive shell the sidewalk
requires and gaze freely out the window, or chat, or cry, or bark directions
while the driver takes her where she wants to go. Thatʼs the fantasy,
anyway. Much depends on the person behind the wheel—probably a man,
since ninety-five per cent of for-hire cabbies and ninety-nine per cent of
yellow-taxi drivers are. He might impose a lecture, a detour, or, perhaps, a
sense of alarm. Dinorah De Cruz, who is sixty-four and one of New Yorkʼs
few female cabbies, has been driving a livery car for around twenty years.
Women, she thinks, possess qualities advantageous for the job: “When
you have kids, you need to be patient,” she explained.

Mateo is the mother of two daughters, and her husband, Fernando, is the
founding president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers. On
Monday, on the steps of City Hall, she held a press conference
introducing SheTaxi—known as SheRides in the city, where using the word
"taxi" is strictly regulated—through which female passengers, via an app,
can request a pickup from one of the female drivers at Mateoʼs affiliated
bases. The drivers will not pick up men, but they will all wear pink
pashminas.

At the announcement, the Mateos were joined by some fifty recruits, De

Cruz among them, in white blouses, black pants, and the requisite pink
scarves. Their attorney, Andrew Celli, declared, “Iʼm here today, as a civil-
rights lawyer, to say that the model Stella Mateo has come up with is the
way of the future and perfectly legal.” If a man is with the woman
requesting a car from SheTaxi, the driver will take them; if a man tries to
use the app, Mateo says, “we are not refusing, we are referring.” (A
spokesman for the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission told me
that SheRides “would be subject to all of the rules and regulations,
requiring that they follow city law, and prohibiting service refusals of any
type.” Still, he added, “That is typically the kind of thing that would come
to us as a consumer complaint.”) Mateo told me, “We have choices for
other things. Gym: Lucille Roberts. Gynecologist: you can go to a man or a
woman.” So, she thought, why not cabs?

After the press conference dissolved, De Cruz left to retrieve her car. “I
donʼt like to walk in heels!” she said. She wore black wedges. “Theyʼre
comfortable.” She wanted to take a taxi to the garage, on the Lower East
Side, so she hailed one, jerking her body forward, thrusting her right arm
into the air, and snapping her fingers. Nothing. Her eye moved across the
street. “Hey, look at that taxi!” She ran toward it, through traffic, waved it
down, slid in, and gave thorough directions to her destination, on the
corner of Columbia and Delancey Streets.

“This is a lady who knows New York!” the driver (a man) said.

From the back seat, De Cruz told him that she was a cab driver, too. Heʼd
never seen a woman driving a taxi in the city, he said. She explained the
SheTaxi concept.

“Is this kind of like that new thing? Hubert?” he asked.

“Uber,” she corrected. “Itʼs not going to be like that because itʼs going
to be more feminine, more smelly. A nice smell. You know women. We all
like our perfume.”

“So itʼs not going to smell like taxi?” he asked.

“No, itʼs not going to smell like taxi. Itʼs going to smell like your private car.
Go to the right!”

“I donʼt like the smell of taxi,” he said.

Mateo has taken many cabs—“If I go out with my friends, if I go out
drinking” —and said that she always prefers a female driver to a male one.
“What if he looks back and sees my legs open?” she asked. With a
woman, “We can talk about that time of the month and say, ‘Oh, I have
cramps,ʼ or whatever. You can change your top.” De Cruz said she has had
women switch shirts in her car.

“Weʼre more peaceful to drive with,” De Cruz told me. She mimed a
bumpy ride. “Not like that. Thatʼs the main difference.” She paused to give
the driver directions—“You make a left and then you make a left again like
youʼre coming back from the highway”—then she went on, “When you
take cabs, you find yourself uncomfortable.” She pretended to pump the
brakes. “That means theyʼre getting nervous. And when you pay your
money, youʼre not supposed to be nervous, youʼre supposed to be
relaxed.”

De Cruz said that she prefers female passengers. “A female is like me, a
man is stronger than me,” she said. She turned to the driver again, “At the
corner, you make a right on Delancy. Right here.”

He laughed. “Youʼre a lady who knows whatʼs goinʼ on!” he said.

She had the cash ready before he tapped the meter. “Here, sir,” she said,
handing it to him. “Thank you.”

We got out at the garage, where De Cruz fetched her car, a charcoal-gray
Acura S.U.V. SheTaxi was supposed to launch today, September 16th, but
they need five hundred drivers to meet the expected demand, and they
only have a hundred so far. Mateo has been hosting lunches for recruits
and will hold office hours daily. De Cruz met Mateo through a mutual
friend; until SheTaxi came along, she thought sheʼd retire. In her front
seat, De Cruz had an apple, a black Yankees cap, two dozen pens, a water
bottle, and a pair of comfortable shoes. A cross hung from the rearview
mirror. And there was something else—a new car smell?

“No, thatʼs my perfume,” she said. “I like Chanel.”

Betsy Morais, who was previously on The New Yorkerʼs editorial staff, is
the managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review.