Women in Brussels can now benefit from “women for women” car rides in the city after ride-sharing app Bolt introduced a new option allowing women riders to request a trip exclusively with female drivers.
Under the new scheme, women drivers are also given the choice to accept only women passengers.
For now, the service will only be available for pre-scheduled trips. Riders will need to pre-book their trip at least 30 minutes in advance to ensure they are matched with a female driver, at a time when the number of women drivers in Brussels remains limited.
In Brussels, while the number of women drivers has quadrupled over the past three years, they still represent just 1% of active drivers.
Since the service was launched last year in France, the number of female drivers has reportedly increased by 95%. There is strong demand for the service from women riders, with ride requests growing by 40% month on month.
Bolt says its objective is to ultimately offer the option on-demand, and to expand it to other Belgian cities "as soon as operational conditions allow."
The company claims it has introduced "robust verification" to ensure there is no "misuse by people with bad intentions".
Before they can book a ‘Women for Women’ trip, riders must first take a selfie with their phone and confirm they are a “real person physically present and clearly identifiable”. They must then upload an ID document, which will be compared to the selfie and also used to verify gender.
The Brussels Times understands that access to the service will be based on the gender marker indicated on official documents. This means that transgender women whose official documents state that they are female will be able to access the service.
A safer way to travel?
Ride-sharing apps like Bolt and Uber have faced criticism in the past for not doing enough to protect women riders from unwanted sexual advances.
Concerns about passenger security engulfed Uber in 2019 after it released its first-ever safety report, which recorded nearly 6,000 incidents of sexual assault and 464 reports of rape over a two-year period.
In Belgium, women subsequently took to social media to share accounts of sexual harassment or assault they lived through as Uber passengers, with one describing how a driver would only open the door for her in exchange for her phone number.
In 2022, regional authorities in Brussels introduced regulations which put requirements for ride-sharing drivers on a par with those of taxi drivers.
Bolt’s new ‘Women for Women’ initiative is being marketed by Bolt as a way to improve the safety of women drivers and passengers using the app.
“The ‘Women for Women’ category responds to a very concrete expectation: enabling women to travel with greater peace of mind, while strengthening the safety and reassurance of women drivers,” said Mahaut de Lesquen, Operations Manager at Bolt Belgium.
“Our ambition in Belgium is clear: to expand this offer over time, attract more women behind the wheel, and create a virtuous circle that benefits the whole community.”
