_edited.png)
Zac Cash and Maya Henry lead an exclusive interview with Menna Farouk: co-founder of Dosy Bikes. Dosy Bikes is Cairo-based organisation that trains women to ride scooters and bicycles, with the opportunity to become a riding instructor once they have completed enough training. Even without becoming Dosy "captains", the mastery of such vehicles serves to defy gender roles that are deep-rooted within Egyptian culture. Autonomy and the prevention of sexual assault are also key foci in their battle against conformity and sexism within both their local and far-reaching societal norms. This digital interview delves deeper into Dosy and explores why the business is growing at such an exponential rate.
Hi, we’re Zac and Maya, it’s nice to meet you! Could you firstly tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yes of course. I’m Menna Farouk and I’m the co-founder of Dosy Bikes. Dosy is a platform that helps women and girls to learn how to ride bicycles and scooters. We seek to empower women economically by encouraging them to be scooter instructors, whilst also promoting their autonomy and protecting the environment. We started in April 2019 and we launched our website in June of that year. So far, we have trained over 1000 girls and women.
Why is it so important, especially where you’re located in Cairo, Egypt, for women to ride bicycles and scooters?
In Egypt it is not common for females to do this; society doesn’t particularly accept female autonomy. Women are restricted by old traditions, so it is unusual to see women riding scooters on the streets. We want to break this stereotype and allow women to do this.
The scheme is now quite established, with a significant uptake and a website. But what was the hardest thing for you to overcome when initially setting up the initiative?
At first, we faced a lot of criticism for our work. Many people believed and still believe that women ‘belong to the kitchen’ and are only suited for domestic roles, rather than believing that women are free to do whatever they want. We tried to overcome this by getting into conversations with the people who criticised us and we tried to challenge and change their belief about women. This was met with mixed results; some people did change their beliefs and began to support us, whilst others remained staunch in their views and carried on criticising us. We also reached out to celebrities in Egypt for support and public endorsements and when people saw these prominent figures be actually be trained by Dosy, this helped our cause hugely and more people began to be convinced that our source was noble and true. Social media also plays a major part in the battle against these strong and deep-rooted ideologies as we can get people from across the world on our side.
That’s really admirable actually that you engaged with these people on a personal basis. How did you attempt to convince them that women can ride scooters and bicycles?
We tried to tell them that women can do whatever they want and that they can do all the things that men can do too. However many of them said that things like riding motorbikes, being boxers and things that are traditionally masculine can only be done by men. We tried to give them examples of women who mastered these stereotypically masculine things, such as female boxers and these resources were really important in putting our cause across and starting up our business.
In an article about Dosy you mentioned that sexual harassment is a large deterrent for women to ride public transport. Do they face the same harassment whilst riding bikes?
Actually, many of the women who trained with us said that they faced encouragement on the streets, and faced almost no sexual harassment, which is a great positive for us. [It] means that our initiative is working to protect these women, whilst also getting recognition and support for our work! Social media is where the majority of the criticism and the threats are, which just goes to show that their trolling is indeed cowardice and is totally superficial, if placed in a real-life situation.
What was the main reason for starting Dosy? Was there a lightbulb moment or specific event where you realised this might be a good idea, or was it a gradual process?
Me and my sister [Nouran Farouk] wanted to learn how to ride scooters, but we could not find a nearby scooter instructor that would help to instruct women. Since there aren’t many scooter instructors anyway in the city, we decided to fill that gap by setting up a scooter school, whilst also promoting female autonomy; essentially promoting two things at once! We launched a Facebook page in April 2019 and we then started to tell people through advertisements that we were hiring scooter instructors. We chose five experienced scooter instructors to get us going, and, through that, we told people about our service. This was really successful, and, in the first month of Dosy being operative, we received over 300 requests from people who wanted to be trained in scooters and bikes. The whole thing comes from personal experience. We noticed that there was a hole in society that needed filling and we want to be the ones to make that change.
How do you recruit women to be instructors? Is the uptake enthusiastic or do you struggle to find people willing to be a ‘captain’, especially with the stigma around traditional ‘masculine’ roles?
We only hire women to be instructors if they have prior experience riding scooters and bikes. But women can get that experience by training with Dosy and then can become one of our instructors. They get trained through the biggest package we offer, which is 10 lessons’ worth of experience and learning, which then gives them enough experience to become one of our instructors. This way, they also generate additional income for their families which is one of our aims for the Dosy start-up. This relates to one of the main problems within Egyptian society, which is that women are underrepresented within the workforce, and many of them need additional money to support their families since their main jobs do not provide an adequate income. We hope that, by becoming an instructor with Dosy, we can provide that extra bit of financial support that women need to raise a family, and provide for their household. If one scooter instructor trains five people a month, they will meet the standard financial requirement needed to sustain a household, so clearly this puts women in an enviable financial position.
What level of recognition has the scheme achieved? Are your partners and supporters Egypt based or do they come from a variety of places/international recognition?
We have received much support from Egyptian celebrities and public figures, but we’ve also been chosen to feature in the last one hundred of a competition run by a prominent Egyptian man, [which was] designed to support the best young entrepreneurs. Those one hundred businesses get training in how to pitch their ideas to investors, and each winner gets a sum of money towards their business. We have also been recognised by the University of Cairo’s start-up programme, which selects forty-one businesses across the world to promote and support their brand. Over the past one and a half years, we have been featured in many local newspapers and TV channels across the Middle East. This then enabled us to reach a wider audience, including Doorstep News! There is a plan to upgrade to electric scooters in order to reduce emissions and to become more environmentally friendly through an Egyptian company called Glide, who manufacture electric scooters, but this is something that will come with time.
You briefly discussed the criticism you faced from society, but did you face any pushback from your family, or your close friends?
For us, no. We never faced any family pushback, rather we received so much support from our family, and that helped us a lot going ahead with the start up, and having optimism when growing the start up and making it reach a lot of people.
That’s wonderful to hear you’ve been supported as a founder. Do any of your students or instructors face push back from their families?
Yes, some of them, yes. We’ve got a lot of women who tell us that their families refuse to let them ride scooters, because they are afraid that their children [will] get hurt. But we try to tell those women to talk to their families, and [reassure] them they are going to learn safely, and be very precautious when riding scooters and bicycles.
So, do you feel that the people who you train ride out of curiosity or a reason, such as transportation? Is it out of interest or necessity?
The majority of them are doing it to use the scooters to go to universities, schools, or workplaces, but some are doing it for fun or curiosity.
How many students and instructors do you have?
Now we have 15 instructors in Cairo and Alexandria, but we have plans to make this number 1000 in the coming two years. The number of women we’ve trained so far in riding scooters and bicycles is more than 1000 women and girls.
Do you think your 1000 instructor goal is likely to come true?
Yes! The market in Egypt that we are targeting is 30 million women, so we think that 1000 is not a big number, but we are very hard working on this number, promoting our business on social media and training more and more women to be these instructors.
You mentioned the importance of social media now, and the role it plays in coverage; what about the importance of press coverage for organizations like Dosy?
Publicity as I told you, is very very important for us, as it shows us to wider audiences. It’s great when people know about you from the press, especially investors. We’ve talked to a lot of people who have said “I heard of you, and we can do this for you, even for free.” Any coverage tells more people what we are doing, and exposes us to a larger population.
What are your future plans for Dosy?
We want to first expand across Egypt at a large rate. We want to expand across the country and then outside the country, into the Gulf markets, so Asia or Africa. These are the long term plans. We also want to launch more riding applications to give more women the right to ride scooters and also [launching more teaching applications] will provide more job opportunities for women.
"Dosy" is a play on words, meaning "take the risk" in colloquial Arabic, and "step [on the breaks]" in classical Arabic.