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.
>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.
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.
It's not, it's self preservation.
> this should not be generalized towards most public spaces.
It's also not. It's an option for people that want the segregation. It's not imposed on people to be separated.
I know you can't be serious but still...
However there are some changes that need to happen and some major issues that need to be improved. Some of those include the reasons why women feel uncomfortable in Ubers. Incidents of very inappropriate comments are extraordinarily common much less the worse things which also happen.
They could still exist, and have the added benefit of anyone regardless of their presenting gender being able to use them.
https://parishistoryofourstreets.com/2021/03/22/the-last-pub...
I've personally been extremely grateful for it on multiple occasions, coming back from a night out.
I'm pretty sure the idea was drunk men were going to urinate in public on the street no matter what the authorities did so they might as well be directed to a urinal.
If you're standing up, it's also a lot easier to "hit the target" into a urinal vs. a toilet. Having a bunch of people peeing standing up into normal toilets would be a lot more gross than urinals.
Urine is not sterile[1] - BUT by itself is not a huge concern.
But you know what urine is? Full of vitamins and minerals. An ideal medium for bacteria.
Urine + Time = Ew.
Looking online I can't find anything about how they are any less sanitary than just a public bathroom is to begin with.
This Uber gender option is about safety for women.
Some women are afraid of male Uber drivers stalking them and learning of their home address. To avoid that, they have to follow "best practice" hacks such as entering a decoy address of a nearby intersection for pickup and dropoff. This makes it more inconvenient but a little harder for Uber drivers to figure out exactly where they live.
Allowing for "female-only" drivers may help passengers avoid the cloak-and-dagger workarounds.
It's always about "safety for women". Or so they say. The argument for disallowing trans women in female bathrooms is also "safety for women". Complete bullshit. Similar argument with end-to-end encryption and safety for children.
However, often times these separations make society more unequal und unsafer for women.
It's a sad world if you think this to it's conclusion: Should females only ride with female taxi drivers? What about trains? Should we have separate train cars for females? Should we disallow females going out on the street alone without a male companion because they might get raped? It's about the safety for women, after all.
No, let's not start down this road. Are there men that harass and rape women? Of course! Will it happen a bit less if there's separation? Maybe. But it has many second-order effects that are not desirable.
Instead, as others have said, we need to think as a society why men are harassing women in the first place, and what we can attack this problem at the root.
> It's always about "safety for women" ... Complete bullshit.
It's not bullshit. What underhand motivation do you think is at work here? Uber famously had a terrible track record on sexual assault (overwhelmingly by men against women), but through policies like this have gradually been working it down.
> Should we have separate train cars for females?
It's not a terrible idea. From talking to women, there is a lot of fear of getting on trains alone at night. If they felt safer about it then it could be a net positive both for public safety and the economy. It has actually been floated in UK politics recently: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/women-only-train-carr...
No it's because they are men.
The main reason we have separate female and male bathrooms is safety for women.
Men who insist on accessing women's bathrooms are already showing themselves to not care about boundaries, it's a huge red flag.
Possibly. I'd argue that it's good to give women the freedom to choose separation in specific scenarios where there's a relatively higher risk of sexual violence. Uber rides have historically proven to be such a scenario.
- 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 don't use rideshares very often though.
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.”
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.
Pay more, or wait longer.
There's no avoiding simple economics.
You cannot give a gender more money to do the same job with the criteria being a specific gender. That is blatantly illegal.
But whether the law is enforced is a whole other question.
A simple solution then is to make the feature a `custom request for the same sex driver/passenger`. Then males can request males and females can request females. Or they (driver/passenger) can simply use it as
1) Just not socialize
2) Do things under the table.
Let people pay the premium for what they want. Sometimes there are good reasons for it. Stop pretending to have an apodictic understanding of both the world and morality.
Women drivers who are willing to drive men will have a larger customer pool than men can get. I would expect this to result in fewer male drivers.
Second, if my personal experience with Uber is typical, there aren't anywhere near enough female drivers available to serve female customers. In order to make this system work, female passengers will either need to wait much longer (for an available female driver) OR Uber will have to increase wages for female drivers (to entice more drivers). That second option is likely illegal - generally speaking, we can't determine wages strictly on gender.
I don't necessarily have a problem with the notion of females selecting female drivers/customers, but I do have concerns about rolling out an actual real-life feature in a legal and fair/equitable manner.
People who were historically against discrimination are well in to embracing it and don't see the problem at all. Why do we need to accept your preferred set of discriminations and not somebody else's?
People have been against making certain decisions on specific bases, limiting the acceptable conditions in which discrimiantion on particular bases is permissible, but literally no one has ever been against all discrimination on bases for which they sought limitations.
The change you perceive is entirely a result of you misunderstanding and oversimplifying to the point of utter nonsense the original position.
I'm being facetious of course, but it does highlight how bad sex discrimination is.
The problem with sex discrimination here is that it is a very crude workaround for a fundamental problem, namely not being safe with some Uber drivers. I'd like to point out at this point that as a dude (especially a scrawny one) you can also get murdered or (sexually) harassed by an Uber driver (male or female). This workaround does nothing for those cases. The fundamental problem will probably simply be properly solved with driverless taxis.
When I have gotten a massage or gone to the doctor (and not seen my regular) I have been asked if I would prefer to be with a male or anyone.
Anytime you decide between options on a particular basis you are discriminating on that basis, that's what the word means.
Whether it is unacceptable (a moral judgement) or illegal (a legal judgement) discrimination are separate questions, but it absolutely and unquestionably is discrimination.
There may still be lawsuits, but it's not obvious that Uber would lose.
It's not even clear that men are at all disadvantaged by current proposal, given that the preference isn't guaranteed to be honored, so female drivers most likely will still be expected to pick up male passengers. In that case, there is essentially no scenario where a man is refused service because of his sex, and it seems questionable whether there is any grounds for legal action at all.
Uber arguably has more eyes on it, but I wonder who would file a lawsuit over this, and how they would articulate an actionable claim.
It is legal as a customer, and as an employee. It’s not as an employer or a business offering a public accommodation in general, but even there there are some exceptions; whether this situation falls into them seems likely to get litigated.
At the core of it, a woman is getting into a vehicle with a stranger.
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.
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.
Also, lesbians can be just as predatory towards females.
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?
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.
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.
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.
>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.
But seriously, wouldn't this service offering fall under whatever legal loop hole exists for women only gyms?
My understanding is that women-only gyms typically operate as 501(c)7 nonprofit private clubs, which are allowed to discriminate. It would be effectively impossible to rework that structure into a ride-sharing app.
Riders don't create a official "W-2 employee" relationship with a Uber driver as defined by the Internal Revenue Service. So the discrimination laws you're thinking of don't apply to riders.
It's the same legal status for Uber to offer a gender option just like the existing childcare platforms to find babysitters or medical provider directories to find doctors. Both the babysitter and doctor platforms are legally allowed to let customers filter on gender. Parents want to specify female-only for babysitters because they're afraid that males are more likely to be pedophiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...
Yes, and notice that the page you cited refers back to the actual text of the Federal laws:
>In employment discrimination law in the United States, both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act contain a BFOQ defense.
This is the actual law prohibiting discrimination on race, sex etc.: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2
But that law applies to "employers" which is defined in the previous section before that.
>(b)The term “employer” means a person engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has fifteen or more employees [...] : https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e#:~:text=(b)...
Simply put, the riders of the Uber platform are not the "employers" of drivers.
seydor•7h ago
rexxy404•6h ago
jobs_throwaway•6h ago
ectospheno•6h ago
nchmy•6h ago
And how is this provocative? It seems to be a pretty simple question/observation about the core of the matter
nicce•6h ago
rs186•6h ago
ryandv•6h ago
ujkhsjkdhf234•6h ago
Lionga•6h ago
ujkhsjkdhf234•6h ago
But I don't think you were asking genuinely and just wanted to be snarky without contributing to the conversation :)
Mawr•4h ago
To answer the original question, wherever there is any power imbalance, there will be abuse. Priests, teachers, parents vs children; boss vs employee; "vulnerable" females vs "aggressive" males. A man complains about assault by a woman, everyone laughs. A woman complains about assault by a man, he gets thrown in jail.
LanceH•6h ago
nordsieck•6h ago
It comes up from time to time if you watch Uber driver videos. There's a reason why many drivers have a camera that records the interior of the car: alcohol + entitlement can manifest in many ways.
Most commonly, passengers cancel the ride and expect to be driven to their destination anyways. But worse stuff happens from time to time.
mmh0000•5h ago
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14385395/leidy-gonz...
Seconds of effort!
AlecSchueler•4h ago
mmh0000•4h ago
AlecSchueler•3h ago
birn559•1h ago
I do know people that have been / are currently victim of that. Except it goes far beyond simple allegations (after marriage breakup).
staticman2•6h ago
I'm having a hard time imagining how this topic of conversation would even come up?
nerdjon•6h ago
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.
sneak•6h ago
From a purely logical standpoint, if this type of discrimination is tolerated, others should likely also be tolerated.
If other types of discrimination are not tolerated, then this type of discrimination should not be tolerated either.
It's no different than white people not wanting black drivers, and Uber supporting that.
nerdjon•6h ago
It is the same as asking if you have a preference when you get a massage or go to the doctor since those are more intimate and likely involving a lack of clothes. Something that in those situations you would feel regardless of your gender. As a male I prefer a male doctor, especially when talking about certain topics. I realize logically this is stupid and they are a professional at the end of the day, but that is my reality.
Unlike those however, there is not really a valid reason for a man to say they don't want a female driver/passenger from a comfort or safety standpoint.
We can argue all day long about in an ideal world we would not need this, but that is not our reality.
sneak•6h ago
There is no more valid reason for a woman to say she doesn't want a male driver than a white person to say they don't want a black driver.
Men, as a group, are not dangerous, and there is no reason to discriminate against them. The vast majority of human beings, men included, are nonviolent.
montjoy•5h ago
This is a false analogy. Men tend to be 40% to 60% stronger than women and testosterone is well linked with aggressiveness.
A better comparison might be people not wanting civilized chimpanzees for drivers.
If my daughter or wife wants a female driver I am 100% ok with that.
AaronAPU•4h ago
I think you may not have seen many other statistics if you think this disproves the point.
Mawr•4h ago
seydor•6h ago
nicce•6h ago
Instead of building trust and ensuring that all Uber drivers are trustworthy drivers - they add option to avoid "potentially" less trustworthy drivers. Latter option is cheaper.
AlexandrB•6h ago
AlecSchueler•3h ago