Womens Day Special- India's First Female Auto Driver

When an 18-year-old Shila Dawre decided to leave her parental home in Parbhani district to go to Pune, all she had was Rs 12 in hand and passion in her eyes to chase her dreams.

No more was she going to be told that her aspirations were worthless and driving was not a profession girls from good households ventured into. Not in the 1980s at least.
And this young woman shut all these stereotypes down when she became India’s first woman auto driver. Rubbing shoulders with khaki-clad men driving rickshaws, clad in her regular salwaar kameez, she drove around the lanes of Pune, owning them.

Recorded in the Limca Book of World Records as the first woman auto-rickshaw driver in the country, Shila Dawre never in her life imagined becoming a trailblazer to women who dreamt of driving auto-rickshaws but restrained themselves because it was a male-dominated sphere.

“I never took up the profession to make a record, In fact I was unaware of the Limca Book Records bestowing the title upon me, until I was approached by people,” she says in a video interview with Pune-based Autowale.in. She is associated with them to encourage women to take up the profession of driving.

But her journey, like most women who established themselves in a male bastion, came with its share of struggles. Her dream began in a social setting where most women in Indian homes were given basic education, just to be married off and serve the conventional roles of homemakers and child bearers.

But Shila, being the rebellious girl that she was, wouldn’t let marriage come in the way of fulfilling her dream of driving.

But the family pressure wasn’t the only thing bogging her down. The societal pressure was no less. She had decided to challenge the patriarchy after all.

When she kickstarted her journey as an auto-driver, she came across many people who were unwilling to rent out their auto-rickshaws to her on the sole ground that she was a woman and they were unsure if she would safely drive their vehicle, constantly reiterating the stereotype of women being bad/unsafe drivers.

But she wasn’t going to give up. She got in touch with various women self-help groups who helped her avail of opportunities to drive auto-rickshaws when the regular drivers were on leave.