The traffic in Cairo is unceasing. In the highly overpopulated capital city of Egypt, it can easily take double the time it should to complete a journey. No wonder then, that thousands of people take to scooters and bicycles to move around - weaving in and out of long lines of congestion. Most of these people have, traditionally, been men. But tech-based scooter-and bicycle-riding platform, Dosy Bikes, is working to empower women to saddle up. Their aim is combat the traffic and contribute to environmental efforts.
Image courtesy of Dosy Bikes
The innovative concept was founded, like all the best ones, out of a personal need. When sisters Menna and Nouran Ali Farouk wanted to learn how to ride a scooter, they struggled to find anyone nearby who could teach them how.
Dosy - a play on words which means both ‘take the risk’ and ‘step on the pedal’ - in Arabic was launched in April 2019. The platform takes a multipronged approach and provides women and girls with nearby female instructors at a schedule that suits them. It’s all about teaching women how to ride, and how to deal with any challenges they may face on the road, Menna tells me over Zoom. It’s also about empowering and creating jobs for women. In the first month of its launch, 300 women showed interest in becoming a trainee. Since then, over 1,000 have learnt how to ride, she says.
When I first came across the platform, the award-winning movie Wadjda, immediately came to mind. The film, written and directed by Saudi-born Haifaa Al-Mansour and shot in Saudi Arabia, follows the story of a young girl who is forbidden from riding a bicycle because of concerns that it is unladylike to do so. It’s a belief that is inherent in much of Arab culture, which places great emphasis on the ‘honour’ of women, and assigns masculinity and femininity to all sorts of things - including means of transportation.
Image courtesy of Dosy Bikes
Image courtesy of Dosy Bikes
She tells me the sisters initially received a lot of criticism on social media in Egypt and across the wider region, but they didn’t let the disapproval get to them. Instead, they set about engaging with their dissenters, as well as actively enlisting celebrities and social media influencers to help change the conversation.
Part of their marketing campaign has involved working with Egyptian celebrities like actresses’ Sandy and Rania Mansour. Both women took scooter lessons with Dosy for TV and movie roles, and posted their progress online. “The more we see that it's normal for a woman to ride a scooter or bicycle, the more women will be encouraged to ride [them] as well,” Menna says - adding that social media support from celebrities has led to a surge in customers.
Menna believes a change is coming. The Egyptian Women Riders club - an all-female motorcycle club that encourages women across the country to take trips on motorcycles - was launched several years ago, and an increasing number of women are saddling up, solo, or in groups.
“As we've seen in Saudi Arabia, women were prevented from driving a car, but now they can drive,” Menna tells me. “I’m seeing there's a change all across the Arab world, and I think many women will ride scooters and bicycles in the near future.”
Menna explains to me that one of the major concerns for women initially were those surrounding safety. This is in regards to being on the road itself and sexual harassment. Alarmingly, 99% of women in Egypt are said to have experienced sexual harassment at one point or another.
As part of the programme at Dosy, there are maintenance packages to teach women what to do should their bike break down, and self-defence training. “We're trying to offer women all the tools they need to be safe on the road while driving scooters or bicycles,” she says.
"One of our aims is to convince society that women should do whatever they want"
Not only does the mastery of these machines serve to defy these deep-rooted gender roles, it also provides women with autonomy. This means of transportation offers a much better alternative to the increasingly expensive and overly packed public trains and buses (where harassment is rife), or increasingly expensive cars filled with increasingly expensive fuel.
Menna explains that having access to a scooter or a bike, especially in rural areas, helps women get to and from school, university or work. This empowers and enables them in their day to day lives and decreases the number of dropouts.
Image courtesy of Dosy Bikes
Their biggest challenge has been the initial difficulty in finding women to be instructors, she says, especially outside of the major cities. This is where they are currently expanding, and unfortunately where cultural stereotypes are more deeply rooted. Menna explains that the more women who are trained to ride, the bigger the pool of instructors to tap into. After completing training, there is an option to become an instructor yourself, which helps provide women with additional means of generating income.
The unemployment rate of young women in Egypt is more than five times that of young males (38.1 per cent in comparison to 6.8 per cent). The COVID-19 crisis has only amplified the need, says Menna. Because of this unemployment problem, Dosy is currently in talks to expand into a delivery service too, which will allow scooter and bicycle riders to become “delivery women” - further providing them with sources of revenue.
Another of Dosy’s aims is to combat traffic congestion and decrease pollution in Egypt which is one of the 10 most polluted cities in the world. With an emphasis on switching to electric scooters, and with a resulting fewer cars on the road - Dosy are already ahead of the crowd.
“The government [in Egypt] is turning to this problem and it's trying to give attention to this,” says Menna, when I ask her about the extent to which the climate crisis is at the forefront of people’s minds. “I think gradually there's going to be a shift in people's perception of the environmental [issues] and our need to protect the environment.”
The sisters make an impressive team by bringing their respective expertise together to create and run what is a ground-breaking initiative. They hope it will continue to expand across the country and the region, and both empower women and save the environment, in one push. Or, as we would say in Arabic, in one dos.
Image courtesy of Dosy Bikes