A taxi service exclusively for women emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic

GoGirl is a door-to-door taxi service aimed exclusively for women.

The initiative came from Jenniffer Martínez, a 26-year-old lawyer whose salary was reduced at the law firm where she worked, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To compensate, he dedicated himself to racing through the digital applications Uber and InDriver in his spare time, since he was studying a master’s degree that had to pay. “On the tours they would tell me what such a young and pretty girl is doing working as a taxi driver. All the time they insisted on me, they asked me out, I only worked for my family, for my two children. Harassment, comments and discomfort are constant ”, he says.

After quitting the law firm because they wanted to pay her even less, last January she started looking for women who wanted to work as taxi drivers, like her, motivated by the stories of kidnappings and robberies of which they were victims.

Only three months later did he find one willing to work. This is how GoGirl was born on May 3 with five female conductors. Today there are already seventy with ages ranging between 25 and 60 years.

“In the law firm they told me that I would not be successful, that I would continue as a taxi driver, that I would not be a coordinator of the company and that no one was really going to work with me because women don’t know how to drive. Machismo where I worked was very common. The few women who were there considered us to be young and pretty, not because we had the intellectual capacity. I have a master’s degree in economic criminal law, I have studied a lot, however I never had the credit for what I did, ”says Jenniffer.

Demand for GoGirl is managed through a call center and the social network WhatsApp (0959879236), in which the routes are tracked with the locations in real time.

There are exceptions, since if children up to 13 years of age or adults with disabilities who are accompanied by their caregivers access the service.

Jenniffer recruits the drivers, analyzes their profiles in the judicial system, because the most important thing, she says, is safety.

“I do criminal law so I know how to review. Only those sentenced have a criminal record and almost no one is because our judicial system is slow. Then I see the complaints, the fines and the accidents. That creates a criminological profile of the person ”.

The information of the drivers and the data of the cars are archived by Jenniffer. Recruitment is done after personal interviews and not online like digital applications.

Host Débora Larrea, 30, is pleased to work at GoGirl. “It is gratifying because as women we realize that we can do something for women and we do not feel so alone. We take care of each other ”.

She studies organizational psychology and at the same time works as a taxi driver. He had not finished his higher education because he dedicated himself to taking care of his son, taking care of the home and doing a school express, a job that ended the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Thank you boss,” Débora says to Jenniffer. “You have broken paradigms even within my family. I am excited to know that as women we can feel valued. When my dad found out he told me that he had spent so much on my education for me to be a taxi driver. That hit me, but later I told him that it is a decent job, ”adds Débora.

In the middle of the tours, the clients tell them what happened to them when they used the traditional taxi service.

One said she had been the victim of express kidnapping three times. The last time they dumped her around one in the morning in Durán, after getting into the taxi at the La Atarazana citadel, where she lives, to go to the San Marino shopping center, in the north of Guayaquil.

“During the tour they insulted her, they groped her in the two-hour journey they had her. So when I put on the pink GoGirl cap I feel like Superman, it’s like I empower myself and I say I’m going to protect the girls, I’m going to give my best service, ”says Débora.

One of the first drivers was Nelly Garcés, 51, who had already worked as a taxi driver since 2005. “I have had clients who even change in the taxi, which they could not do if they were a driver, or they ask us to pick up the children from school or we take them home ”, he says.

A client also told him about the harassment she felt when using the app taxis. “A passenger told me that after staying inside an urbanization, the driver wrote her by message and told her that she was very sexy, if she didn’t want her to get off.”

The promotion is done with flyers and on a TikTok profile (@gogirlecuador) that has more than five thousand followers. The first video accumulates more than 200,000 views. And the company already has a database with 3,500 women. (I)