Femitaxi App: Solution, evolution or involution?

One out of three women in the capital of São Paulo states to have suffered some form of harassment while traveling by public transport, in Mexico city, six out of ten women has suffered genre violence in the D.F metro and in 2013, the Police registered 109 cases of sexual assault in the TransMilenio system and the rates go on along Latin America.

Several countries have implemented gender segregation policies in public transport in order to protect women from violence.

For instance, in Mexico the program “Viajemos seguras”, in Colombia the controversial “Vagón Rosa” that worked during 2014 and the current “Femitaxi” app in São Paulo that offers taxi service only to women and driven by women.

All these measures intending to separate women and men while using the public transport in order to lower genre violence rates.

The breaking point is then, is it necessary for our countries to segregate in order to respect?

It is not a definitive solution, on the contrary, it is a defeat for the Latin American society. These actions were took due to some dramatic cases of women who raised their voices but remained unheard and people did nothing, then it is like saying they are not safe if they mingle with men. But if it is temporary and complemented with other government actions, such as pedagogical routes of denunciation; protocols lesson to drivers, , workers, and so on; and educational campaigns for questioning and promoting citizen culture, can serve as a real social process instead medieval measures that only delay even more the progress of our region, a region still incapable of showing total respect for women, children, elderly population, men, nature, culture or anything else valuable for the world but kept underestimated for our society.