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Interesting to see downstream pricing effects from this. In general, riders with specific filters applied get higher quotes than riders without them.
Uber either:
- lets the market equilibrium naturally settle (meaning women requesting woman drivers "pay a safety premium" - hard PR sell)
- manually suppresses the difference, creating distortions that I can't immediately imagine or articulate.
Same on the driver's side.
There will be exactly two options:
Pay more, or wait longer.
There's no avoiding simple economics.
I imagine there also will be sex discrimination lawsuits. It just isn't legal to make decisions while employed based on whether or not you're a woman or likely as a customer as well.
Are drivers required to provide sex assigned at birth? If not, we might see male drivers conveniently identifying as women to circumvent this (presumably to minimize wait times between rides). Although I guess they'd get canceled on a lot.
This is interesting, it made me think of trans genders and other minorities.
It would be nice to select LGBTQ friendly rides for example.
I also wonder if you transition, can you change your "sex" on Uber? how would that work and how would they prevent abuse?
I think the attack vector is traditionally opportunistic. Horny driver suddenly has a vulnerable woman in his car and they're in a secluded area, boom there's an assault.
Any driver who is so premeditated about his assault plans that he would sign up to Uber pretending to be a woman probably has easier and more direct ways to access victims that are less likely to blow up in his face.
My wife gets hit on and asked out all the time when taking Ubers/Lyfts by herself. It's unfortunate, but it's just a reality for women.
My partner was sexually assaulted in a Lyft. Background checks only detect people who have been previously accused or convicted; they don't protect against people who haven't been caught yet.
At the core of it, a woman is getting into a vehicle with a stranger.
This is why Waymo is the preferred choice when sending a ride for a woman, especially at nighttime.
Report it an give 1 star every time.
My girlfriend had some driver straight up offer her $100 for sex one night. Another weirdo started stalking her, spamming her coworkers, etc.
It’s absolutely insane to me. Worst I’ve ever had in an uber were geriatric drivers who probably shouldn’t have had their license still.
The pain of having an attractive wife or female partner. Some guys are so aggressive a-holes that more decent women end up shying away from men in general.
Imagine being hit easily 10-50x a day, every effin' day. Work, street, public transport, online, everywhere. Guys really think inviting pretty ladies 'for a coffee' aint something they heard 100x that week already.
Dated one such lady, the trauma and trust issues were real. Either they get spolied for attention or get traumatized. Everybody loses.
Discriminating against all men because some men are violent criminals is like discriminating against all black people because some black people are violent criminals.
One type of stereotyping and discrimination is socially acceptable. The other is not.
Classifying and disadvantaging a huge group of people because of the actions of a tiny fraction of that group is unjust.
It is my personal belief that neither type of discrimination should be acceptable.
I talked with a woman uber driver in Ann Arbor. She was telling me that she lives in Toledo but drives up to Ann Arbor/Romulus (DTW airport) because the customers are safer and overall nicer while in Toledo she made it sound like everyone's an asshole.
That’s on brand for Toledo.
Men won't be able to do so?
They should be able to. I have spoken with several drivers who are afraid of taking female passengers because of spurious assault allegations.
I'm curious how that would play out over time. Since it would be male drivers who have no intention of harassing/assaulting female passengers that take this option, would you get a "Dead Sea" effect of proportionally more predators being left in the "accepts riders of any sex" group? Over time this could create an incredibly sex-segregated service.
To ask for only women? The biggest threat factor for men is other men.
While I can kinda buy the argument for why men may want to do this, it is also complicated and how far do we go. (saying this as a guy for the record)
Is it that you are either free for all or you can limit to your own sex or a sex of your choice? So could men say they only want woman? What about trans people.
Do we start adding in religion, political affiliation, race, etc etc etc.
Woman not feeling safe with unknown (and largely unvetted) Male drivers (or passengers) is a valid concern. It feels more like a bandaid than an actual fix, but it is an "Easy" solution to a problem. The ideal should be that we don't need this, not that we add in more filters like this. But for many reasons we as a society are not there.
sigh : Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
This should work in all directions. Male passengers should be able to request male drivers only. Male drivers can request male passengers to avoid any hassle of female passengers.
Also, lesbians can be just as predatory towards females.
Is this legal?
>The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.
Good thing uber driver's aren't employees /s
But seriously, wouldn't this service offering fall under whatever legal loop hole exists for women only gyms?
This feels like an indirect response to Waymo. I've heard from women in the Bay Area that they just feel safer taking Waymos.
Im a man, and feel safer taking waymo as well.
Waymos, or Uber blacks...
have a lot going for them.
Initially, the 2008 cut off for Ubers, and the related on site inspections led to high quality; but over time, I've been in more vehicles with check engine and other lights on -- and heard more failed shocks (and mounts) than I would like to ride in; though the suspension is more sketch in a cab.
That seems reasonable. If that's the case, I don't know how successful it will actually be for that purpose if anyone can choose for themselves to identify as female.
Uber should let men drivers and riders request to avoid being paired with women and other genders
This is what being part of the problem looks like. Not ok.
I don't think self-driving vehicles are widespread enough to make this happen
The threat factor from other men is the highest.
This feels like another flavor of "All Lives Matter" and is equally tone deaf.
I feel like a better solution would be to make a version 2 of Beacon that includes cameras.
I don't like it, but I understand.
It won't work out for riders initially since wait times for women drivers will be egregious so people will just switch back to no preference.
But I'm curious how many women would now feel safe enough to sign up as drivers given this option.
If it does take off, male drivers won't get as many riders but that's ok since their demand was inflated by lack of choice anyway.
Two questions that came to mind...
- What's the prevalence of female drivers on Uber (I'm assuming ridership is close enough to 50/50 to not really matter)?
- What's the sexual assault rate on Uber vs traditional cabs, sedan service, etc? And versus baseline rate in general?
I've never had an Uber where the driver wasn't male.
I don't use rideshares very often though.
> What's the prevalence of female drivers on Uber
Article says uber had about 20% female drivers in US in 2015.
“A survey from the company in 2015 found that about a fifth of its U.S. drivers were women.”
Just looked at my own ride history. All 14 Lyft rides in the past 12 months were with male drivers. Most Uber rides were with male drivers as well.
I think the direction we should go in is not to separate genders, but unify them. For example, there shouldn't be separate bathrooms or parking spaces. The more you make the separation, the more divided a society becomes. Just look at many muslim socities like Arabic countries where almost everything is separated.
Now, I am a male, but many females, including my partner, actually advance this point of view. Also look at more equal socities like in Nordic countries, and you'll see that there's much less separation than in countries with more gender inequality.
Of course, we can argue cause and effect and what not, but I still stand by the opinion that separation also has an effect on gender equality, not only the other way round.
This will do more harm than good. I guarantee it.
This doesn't seem so much a progressive behavior as a result of segregation and broken cultures. And indeed that seems to be the origination of the practice.
>In 2019, Uber rolled out a women rider preference feature for female drivers in Saudi Arabia after women won the right to drive in 2018.
As the article barely manages to mention, Lyft launched this years ago.