When women riders and drivers told us they wanted more control over how they ride and earn, we listened. That feedback led to Women Preferences, features designed to give women the choice to ride with other women. Since our first pilots last summer, we’ve heard just how much that choice matters—from feeling more comfortable in the back seat to more confident behind the wheel.
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Maybe Uber should be responsible for background checks of their drivers and hold them accountable for their actions and be able to fire them for misconduct. But that might require hiring drivers as actual employees. And then Uber could issue company vehicles.
Oh wait, I’m describing taxi companies that already existed before Uber.
The fact that we allow Uber/Lyft to operate as a way to skirt regulations that were put in place to keep people safe, and then trust Uber will implement work around solutions like this is ridiculous.
Same goes to AirBnB
Agreed. Contract work that isn’t actually contract work should be illegal.
While I agree with this, and I’m not defending skirting regulations, before rideshare apps, taking taxis was an awful experience. At least half the time, if you try to pay with a credit card, the machine was “broken”, if you wanted to get a ride at a specific time you had to call ahead and hope that a taxi would show up.
Rideshsre apps forced regular taxis to up their game and provide better service, some did and now have their own apps.
I don’t even know what regulations they are skirting. You can’t just sign up to become a driver without submitting information just like any other job. Background checks are required, licenses and what not. People are also supposed to leave feedback if they had a bad experience so I could only imagine that the complaints are surrounding the idea that Uber isn’t following up on the feedback enough. That said if 500 people ride with that driver and rate them well, and 1 person says they were a perv, and Uber looks at it and finds that person has called several male drivers pervs while they get good ratings from everyone else, there could be a problem that those people have a type, or Uber could be thinking the issue is the rider at that point
Uhh I traveled to san Fransisco and there was an Uber booth in mall I was getting some necessities for. The booth dude was like hey come earn some money. I’m not from here , no worries that doesn’t matter, ok well I don’t have a car. That’s fine we can get you sorted on that, it’s a great way to make I little extra money.
No dude I’m not interested.
If you change your mind come back
Worker regulations mostly. Since drivers aren’t employees, they get no benefits whatsoever.
Uber doesn’t deserve much credit for this…they’re just streamlining a behaviour that’s already present among their drivers and customers. It’s a business decision.
As a man I also want to select a female driver only. Seriously here in the Netherlands if you get a male driver good chance it’s some agro 20 year old high on NOx who also hates queers. I’m not even queer but I don’t want my money going to cunts like that.
I don’t get why they don’t just make this a global option. Anyone can choose their preferred gender. Some women prefer women, some prefer men. Hell, some men prefer men.
You can already choose your driver or passenger. All this is is streamlining something that’s common.
Fair enough, I don’t use driving services so honestly don’t know what the experience is like.
give men the option to ride with men as well, and nobody will have an issue with this
Many women want to ride with other women for safety reasons. Men would only choose their riders gender for bigotry reasons. There is little reason to enable their bigotry. If fewer bigots ride it’s a bug not a feature.
and this right here is why I cant stand a lot of other liberals. you guys make me ashamed to be one… smh
How hard is this to understand. Women frequently feel unsafe with strange men in uncontrolled situations like alone in a car because men who are commonly bigger and stronger commonly beat and rape women. Men who are on average bigger and stronger are very rarely assaulted or raped by strange women because women are both less physically imposing and are less prone to violence and most specifically sexual violence. Whereas its not impossible or unheard for a woman to be so this is so uncommon it is rarely something people are reasonably concerned about either factually or culturally.
Did I really need to tell you any of that or did you in fact already know that. The whiners here do NOT want men to be equal and have the ability to chose men drivers they want women not to have a path to discriminate against them because THEY believe they aren’t the problem. Hell the guys who ARE the problem are also sure they aren’t the problem.
nothing about this is hard to understand, I just don’t want to perpetuate hate and inequality, or create division. letting both sexes choose their own sex if they want to wouldn’t leave anyone feeling slighted. its a simple solution that wouldn’t leave anyone room to complain.
Why do we care if anyone has room to complain?
why not just let both sexes choose their own if they want to? when we have an easy way to be as inclusive as possible why not be?
can males avoid women drivers or is that considered sexist? what if a male wants to mitigate the chance of being falsely accused of assault/rape? I hope people have the choice regardless of gender
edit: the downvotes are funny… I assume people think I mean women should not have the choice, but I mean the opposite. EVERYONE should have a choice, or no one. it’s call being fair. rape/sexual assault is not a good scenario for anyone and if people are fearful, they should be allowed to make a choice that allows them to feel comfortable. the downvotes just show me that people are disrespectful/not caring when it comes to fairness and equality. l… or they are just flat out sexist pricks.
It might be considered sexist, depending on who you ask.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault. Hence why there has been provided a measure for women at this scale, and not for men.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault.
And you know this because… vibes?
Will women drivers be high in demand since the majority of drivers are men?
It will increase the demand, yes.
i have only ever been sexually harassed by male uber drivers. this is a nice feature
I was once harassed pretty horribly by a lady driver.
Long story...
As soon as I got in the car, she handed me her cell phone and told me to put my favorite song on (wtf), not taking no for an answer and not accepting her phone back. While I eventually realized I couldn’t hand her back her phone without a song on, I started looking through Spotify. She started asking very personal and increasingly more intimate questions. The tone was very authoritative too. It felt like she was demanding me to answer.
At first I just gave non answers to, hinting discomfort and lack of interest, but then had to clearly and plainly tell her her questions were making me uncomfortable. She laughed it off, asked why I felt that way and then kept asking things that were completely inappropriate, very bluntly. It was an extremely intense conversation and I felt like I was being interrogated as some kind of weird power trip thing.
Eventually I stopped answering (sometimes I forget conversations are optional), kept quiet for a few questions and I asked some small talk things just to take the focus off my intimate life. I asked how her day had been, how long she Ubered for and what was going on in her life.
Pot twist: Turns out she had just been dumped from the only relationship she had in her life, which had lasted about 8 years. She was basically having a mental breakdown and trying to talk her way out of it in the worst possible way. She may have also been neurodivergent.
I told her about a breakup I had that was horrible and how I eventually bounced back. We then talked about life and what mattered to us. Ended up shaking hands and wishing each other well when she dropped me off.
Does this prove anything? No.
Is it good that people can choose the gender of their driver? Sure, I guess.
What was the point of my story? Erm… Is there a point? i guess maybe sometimes creepiness is just a sensitive person going through some shit? I just wanted to share tbh.
She did harass the shit out of me, despite me never feeling in physical danger next to her (which of course would have made the dynamic completely different), but idk she was also a nice person.
Honestly, there’s no point to my story and I’m not trying to prove anything. I’ve just never talked about this, your comment just brought the memory back and I felt like writing it out.
If you got here, thanks for reading and I’m truly sorry for all the ways you suffer and face terrifying situations I am unable to understand.
I should get some sleep. Have a good one.
Thanks for sharing
It’s things like this that make me, as a man, to prefer male servers/drivers.
If women chose other women, that’s fine but I do feel bad about the men getting less work, so I think it’s only fair to balance the demand gap by allowing men to chose male servers/drivers.
That behaviour would probably have the opposite effect that the people who created this rule would want.
they are choosing women drivers for their safety, you are throwing a tantrum because women wanting to feel safe in the face of a systemic and well documented issue has hurt your feelings.
A small percentage of women will ever face any sort of harassment from male drivers.
At the same time, all male drivers will be affected by this feature, reducing their life-supporting income through no fault of their own, simply because they have “male” in their documents. I think that’s the point.
A small percentage of women will ever face any sort of harassment from male drivers.
Ask any women in your life, it is not a small percentage. And you dismissing their safety concerns and prioritizing your comfort is the exact reason why this is necessary.
If all men would look at this and say “Sucks that this is needed, but way too many men are genuinely dangerous and we should actively purge them from our institutions so in the future solutions like this won’t be needed” then we would not have a problem in the first place. It is people like you that makes half the population afraid and anxious about the other half.
Most of the comments here seem to be talking about the politics of the gender roles, but no one really seems to be mentioning that Uber should only be used as a very last resort. Call a Taxi, a friend, take public transit. Do not support the VC startup trash that doesn’t pay their
employees“contractors” living wage.Taxis aren’t as safe for women as ride-shares because they’re “anonymous”, from the drivers perspective.
