Women behind the wheel

Turn on the ignition, put your car in first gear and with the increasing acceleration you have the hold of your dream of driving your car. Seems simple? Wake up, because it’s not easy if you are learning how to drive in Karachi, and are a female, then you are always on the wrong track. Rushing cars, buses, motorbikes buzzing forth from both the sides of your car, huge trucks and trailers banging horns behind your car to speed up. And God forbid if those nine-seaters — Qingqi rickhaws — let you drive calmly. This is not a scene of any busy road but a reality you will face if you are a female driver and unfortunately driving on any road of Karachi.

As I am still in the learning stage, I always think about how women get stereotyped as bad drivers and how this stereotype can be removed. The tag obviously didn’t come from dictionaries but yes, from the lack of confidence and self-esteem some women show while driving. Because of many women with low self-confidence, the label of ‘bad drivers’ seems to have stuck to women in general, even those who are good drivers and learners. Such strong stereotyping  against female drivers makes it difficult to drive faultlessly on the roads of Karachi.

A female driver, in the stage of learning, will find life more miserable in the city where traffic is increasing by the day. I am a learner with the learner's label displayed on my car. This will never let me drive freely as every other passing vehicle makes me realise that I am a woman and cannot be a good driver. When I started driving, I thought I was the only one facing this problem until one day, one of my friends snidely commented that if you see a car going at a slow speed in a fast lane, it’s understood that it’s being driven by a female and if you see a car making slow, fearful, wrong turns on the road, the driver must again be a female for sure.

Being a reporter, I have to go to several places for events and happenings, but this stereotyping will never let me learn to drive in peace, which in turn will never make my travel easy. Competing with men in every walk of life, I never thought that driving would be this difficult for me.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2015.