Diari ARA reported on 22 October 2026 that women-only taxis are gaining ground in Helsinki and Tampere. Club WOWO Oy, working as Wowo, sets out the same service on its own site. Women drive. The passengers are women and children aged from birth to 14. The company was founded in 2025, the app followed in spring 2026, and the service now covers the capital region, the neighbouring municipalities and Tampere. Taxis only for women gain ground in Finland
Who can book
The idea started in summer 2023 with four friends, Pia, Kata, Julia and Anni. The team named on the company site is Pia Somervuo, Katariina Kainulainen D'Ambrosio and Julia Normala. Wowo stands for women to women. Club WOWO on its own launch
Rides are ordered in the app and are booked ahead. The soonest pickup is 30 minutes after the order. The firm relies on the customer's own declaration of sex and does not check it. A person recorded as a woman in the official registers can join. Membership starts with a one-off payment of 2 euros through MobilePay. The driver does not pick the passenger at the roadside. Work arrives only from accepted members.
A member may bring a male friend or relative if he travels the same route to the same destination. A passenger who has not joined can, for the time being, be collected only as a woman or a child, without a male companion.
The listed area is Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen, together with Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Tuusula, Vihti, Mäntsälä and Pornainen, plus the Tampere area. Further cities are to follow one at a time. Who can book a Club WOWO car
On the road
A driver needs a current taxi driver's licence, and the business supplying the car needs a transport licence. The vehicle has to be registered for licensed taxi work and show the Club WOWO mark on a job. The platform keeps 15 per cent of the total fare. Drivers are self-employed or employed by a vehicle proprietor, and the proprietor's ownership is not restricted. The car can take this work when a woman with a valid taxi driver's licence is driving. Both licences are checked on registration. Drivers may also work for other dispatch firms.
Equality guidance
Club WOWO writes that it asked the Ombudsman for Equality before launching, and that the reply was a green light. The equality page presents a women-only service as lawful where the ground is objectively acceptable and the means are appropriate and necessary, and it cites section 9 of the Act on Equality between Women and Men (609/1986). How Club WOWO describes equality
Ilta-Sanomat reported on 11 March 2026 that the ombudsman's office had given Club Wowo a general updated list of guidance the previous Tuesday. The paper obtained that text by an information request. The office stressed to the paper that this was not a formal view on whether this particular business meets the Act. In the guidance, as Ilta-Sanomat reported it, sex discrimination is prohibited in goods and services offered to the public, but a service directed only or mainly at one sex is permitted when a legitimate aim, such as safety, is pursued by appropriate and necessary means. A rule allowing an association to admit only women applies to registered associations, not to a trader. After the 2023 reform of legal sex, a business will find it difficult or impossible to tell a customer's legal sex, and a sex-based offer can therefore cause confusion or a feeling of discrimination. A trader should not need to ask a customer about sex. The equality ombudsman gave the women's taxi new guidance
Naistaxi, Bolt and the drivers
ARA named Naistaxi as another firm on the same model, and reported that Bolt now lets a woman passenger request a woman driver. Naistaxi's driver pages describe a workforce of verified women carrying verified women passengers, with commission at 15 per cent. A driver there needs a business ID and taxi licences from Traficom, the transport agency. Those pages do not name the towns. Drive with Naistaxi
Yle News reported on 15 July 2026 that Tara Oinonen, driving for Club Wowo, had been grabbed by the head and kissed by one passenger and touched from the back seat by another, and that several of the cases had gone to the district court. The same report carried the account of Mikael Uusivuori, Bolt's country manager in Finland. On that account, Women for Women has run in the Helsinki area inside Ring III since March 2026 and in Tampere since June 2026, demand for women drivers had far exceeded supply, more than 95 per cent of Bolt's drivers were men, and women drivers had found night shifts unsafe. Finland's women-only taxis gain traction