SOME time in the mid-2000s, I attended a conference for journalists in Goa. I remember very little of the panels. What I remember is going into town. Women everywhere, on scooters. Young women in jeans. Middle-aged women in saris, the pallu tucked in, a shopping bag on the footboard. Older women with grey buns and sensible sandals, weaving through traffic as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Because it was.
I kept staring. Nobody else did.
This was next door. Same subcontinent, same heat, same chaotic roads, same aunties. So why was it unthinkable at home? In Karachi, a woman on a motorbike belonged on the back seat, perched sideways, dupatta wrapped tight so it would not catch in the wheel, one hand gripping the seat and the other holding a child. She was a passenger, in every sense. I never expected to see that change in my lifetime.
Last month, a Gallup & Gilani survey found that 83 per cent of Pakistanis believe more women ride two-wheelers today than three years ago. In cities, the figure rises to 91pc. That is perception, not a headcount. But perception matters. People are noticing because there is something to notice.
When the Sindh government launched its Pink Scooty scheme last year, offering free electric scooters to female students and working women, it hit an awkward problem. Only 154 women across the entire province reportedly held motorcycle driving licences in June. You cannot hand a scooter to a woman who is not legally allowed to ride it. So the scheme required a licence and offered free training to get one. Minister Sharjeel Memon told local media that over 50,000 women had applied for licences. From 154 to 50,000. Even allowing for a politician’s optimism, that is not a trend. That is a door swinging open.
Consider the choices before a young woman with a job offer across town.
It did not happen overnight. Karachi’s Women on Wheels programme, launched in 2019, recorded more than 3,000 registrations and trained hundreds of women to ride on the University of Karachi campus. The groundwork was laid quietly, by women willing to wobble, fall, and get back on.
Why does this matter so much? Because in Pakistan, the road to a job runs through the question of how a woman gets there.
Pakistan has one of the lowest rates of female labour force participation in the world. The World Economic Forum puts it at about 28pc. In our cities, World Bank research suggests it has hovered around 10pc for two decades. There are many reasons. Social norms. Childcare. Workplace harassment. But again and again, studies return to the same plain obstacle: transport.
Consider the choices before a young woman in Karachi with a job offer across town. A rickshaw eats into her salary every single day. Ride-hailing costs even more. The bus is crowded, unpredictable, and, too often, a gauntlet of stares and hands. If no brother, father, or husband is free to drive her, the job may simply not be worth taking. A whole career can be lost to the problem of the commute.
A scooter changes that arithmetic. It is cheap to run, cheaper still when it is electric. It goes where buses do not. It leaves when she is ready, not when someone else is. It turns a job across town from a family negotiation into a decision she can make herself.
That is what economic independence looks like on the ground. Not a slogan, but a set of keys.
And independence is the point. For most women, freedom is not an abstraction. It is the ability to earn, spend, leave, and return on their own terms. Financial freedom is freedom. A woman who can get herself to work can pay her own fees, support her parents, save for her children, and, if she must, walk away from a home that is hurting her.
None of this is finished. Being seen is not the same as being accepted. Women riders still face harassment and disapproval. The change is clearer among urban, middle-class women than in villages. And reminders of how far we still have to go. In June, the minister told the Sindh Assembly that traffic police had been instructed to stop men riding the pink scooters after complaints that some women’s brothers had taken them over.
I laughed when I read that. Then I stopped laughing. It says everything about who has usually held the keys in our homes.
But the keys are changing hands. Slowly, unevenly, one licence at a time.
The other day, at a traffic signal, a young woman pulled up beside me on a scooter. Nobody stared. I did, for a moment. Then I smiled. When the light turned green, she was gone. It looked like Goa. It looked normal. It looked like home.
The writer is a journalist and conducts writing workshops in Karachi.
X: @LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2026
