Hong Kong women taxi drivers on why they love the job and how they deal with sexist colleagues and passengers

Women drivers are often the butt of chauvinistic jokes, so it’s not always an easy ride for Hong Kong’s female taxi drivers. Working in a typically male profession, they risk being picked on by cabbies of the opposite sex and shunned by sexist passengers.

That’s been the experience of Anna Tam Choi-har, 72. Tam has been behind the wheel of a Kowloon red taxi for 45 years – longer than many men – and remembers when the flag fall was merely HK$1.

Her male peers can be rude, she says, recalling an incident that happened just this month, when a male driver queue jumped to pick up a passenger. “He saw that I was woman, so he thought I could be easily bullied,” she says.

Passengers can also be unkind, Tam says. “When they see that you’re a woman, they might not get in your cab. They take other taxis [with male drivers]. One time, a passenger got into my cab and immediately asked if I could drive faster. I hadn’t even set off yet. They [passengers] think that because you’re a woman you’ll drive slowly. There are even woman passengers who look down on women taxi drivers.”

There are 40,000 taxi drivers in Hong Kong – most of them sharing cabs in shifts – according to To Sun-tong, director of the Motor Transport Workers General Union. The Transport Department says 6,100 taxi licences are in the hands of women. However, the exact number of women cabbies can’t be confirmed because not everyone who holds a licence drives a taxi – many rent them to others.

Tam, who earns HK$600 to HK$700 per 12-hour shift, says another disadvantage in being a woman taxi driver is that, since women are generally physically weaker, it takes longer to change a flat tyre.