“Just a slap, but he can’t hit me.” This line from the movie Thappad, directed by Anubhav Sinha, is more than a line. For many women in the country it is an inspiration. I realised this when I met Saraswati Singh, a woman cab driver from Delhi. “If he beats me once, he will beat me again,” she said with conviction. Her point: women must first shed the fear that holds them back.
When I booked the cab, the driver’s name on my phone read Saraswati. My own stereotype, as a man, meant I never questioned the driver’s gender. I assumed it was the surname of a male driver at the airport. Saraswati drove rental cars for years before she bought her own car in 2023. She comes from Prayagraj and is now a single mother. Her day starts with getting her children ready for school. Then she heads to work. From 2 PM until late at night she drives across Delhi, picking up and dropping off passengers, making sure she earns enough to support her family. On how male passengers react to a woman driver, she says, “Who decides which job is for men and which one is for women?”
The Azad Foundation: Breaking the Myth
Gender roles still decide what work people do. The Azad Foundation is challenging that by training women to become drivers. “We are a feminist organisation,” says Madhubala, who currently heads Azad Foundation Delhi. “We believe in gender equality and aim to break the patriarchal myth that women can only engage in traditional professions like making papads, pickles, or stitching.”
Since it began in 2008, the Azad Foundation has helped women earn a living by training them as professional drivers. “Driving has always been perceived as a male-dominated profession,” she explains. “We want to change that by enabling women to take up driving not just as a skill but as a career.”
The foundation works in four cities: Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Jaipur. “Currently, there are around 5,000 women drivers across these cities, with over 100 women employed as drivers with Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC),” Madhubala shares. The work challenges gender norms. It also gives women from marginalised backgrounds a way to earn their own money.
On the Road: Stories of Courage
Saraswati’s story is not unusual among women who drive for a living in India. Across the country, more and more women are taking the wheel, literally and figuratively. They are defying what society expects and earning their own independence.
The Azad Foundation has trained over 3,000 women drivers since it started. Many of them come from poverty or from homes marked by abuse. In driving they have found not just a living but dignity and self-reliance.
For Saraswati, the cab is more than a vehicle. It is a statement. Each shift is quiet defiance of the systems that tried to hold her back. With every passenger she picks up, she carries a message. No profession belongs to one gender. And women’s work, visible or invisible, deserves recognition, safety and fair pay.
Steering Toward Lasting Change
Stories of individual courage inspire us. But equal work for women needs the system itself to change. Women drivers in India still face big barriers: harassment from passengers, no safe rest stops, little access to loans to buy a vehicle, and stigma from families and communities.
Organisations like the Azad Foundation tackle all of this together. They teach driving, but also life skills, legal basics and mental health support. They also push for policies that give women in non-traditional jobs safe workplaces and fair pay.
Saraswati Singh drives through Delhi’s crowded streets with quiet determination. Her story, and those of thousands of women like her, reminds us that the fight for gender equality is not only fought in boardrooms and parliaments. Sometimes it happens on the road, one kilometre at a time.
