Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US
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Of course she immediately hung up and cancelled the ride. I drove a few blocks in the opposite direction he wanted to go and threw him out of my car.
That's how he acted with me in the car. Can't imagine how he would have been alone with a female driver.
Culturally, the response has been to celebrate reactive perceptions, like women proudly declaring that they'd prefer to encounter a bear in the woods over a man. Or just generally dismissing or subverting the desire to be masculine.
This imbalance enables women to be socially transgressive (even criminally so) with impunity. That discussion is shot down with pithy remarks like, "well, men kill women."
I'm not really too concerned with any of this, I'm just pointing out that it does to some degree culturally exist. In some ways, it makes sense.
These threads are always filled with two sides talking past one another around this general power imbalance.
I do think this kind of surface level divisiveness is what has fueled some of the counter-reaction reactionary movements we're dealing with today.
A lot of what is disappointing to you is imo a more personal reaction to other problems that are happening.
For example, the loneliness epidemic. Culturally, immediate solutions to immediate problems can be at odds with other problems that we have limited understanding of.
I'm rambling. There is something that I want to tease out, but it's difficult to articulate.
Something like, the discourse around this has to change if we want things to actually improve. It probably includes (uncomfortably) acknowledging that we need to have healthy and positive outlets for masculinity. My sense is that it can't be good to continue down this technologically empowered segregation path, that companies will be more than willing to enable if it improves their bottom line.
In the West it happens with males, white people, religious groups, political groups, and much more.
> enables women to be socially transgressive
That usually means, transgressing the status quo. Women (and men) are free people who can do whatever they want, unless they actually injure someone else. Exercising their freedom isn't transgression, it's the norm.
> even criminally so
What does that refer to?
Because it's just not the world we live in. I don't care to enumerate this here.
But I agree with you that part of the problem is politics of power. I just happen to think there is more nuance.
Criminality, there are a handful of stats we could looks at. For example gendered differences in sentencing.
> When examining all sentences imposed, females received sentences 29.2 percent shorter than males. Females of all races were 39.6 percent more likely to receive a probation sentence than males. When examining only sentences of incarceration, females received lengths of incarceration 11.3 percent shorter than males.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/2023-demograp...
But instead of arguing about stats, in general -- and this goes back to the social transgression bit. In the real world, women can do things to men that men can't do to women. This is largely due to the politics of power. Im not particularly preoccupied by it, but I do acknowledge that it exists.
Your response is _precisely_ what I'm calling out: two people talking past one another. I do not feel that youve interpreted anything I've said with grace. Instead it's more along the lines of, "yeah yeah yeah, but it's really about power"
Maybe. Hacker news is probably disproportionately powerful white males. I try not to assume bad intent with these things.
I'm merely pointing out that culturally, we will only get worst by trying to shame "normal" people (men) into feeling ways. In fact, I think the "cultural moment" as they say is indicative on how much that has failed.
Whether or not you enumerate it is irrelevant. Individual liberty is the foundation of the modern world. Of course there are exceptions, complications and imperfections, but the principle and the widespread practice are very clear and well established.
(Edit: Also, if we are talking about right and wrong rather than legal principles, liberty is what's 'right' to me (and most others). Everyone should have the same liberty, not merely the powerful.)
> sentencing
> shame
Victimhood is irresponsible (and a tactic used almost universally by the powerful to change the subject). The overwhelming amount of actual harm done between genders is men harming women, and it has been for as long as anyone can remember. That is the responsibility of men generally and the problem that needs solving. In some societies, they do address it.
If that makes you feel ashamed, that's your problem. When someone points out a problem to me, I feel responsible for solving it and get to work. 'I'm ashamed' is an obvious excuse.
> politics of power
The same behavior has very different outcomes because of differences in power between powerful and vulnerable parties: Bad behavior itself isn't dangerous, bad behavior + power is the problem.
If in a white suburb a black person says to a white person, 'we don't want your kind here', it's a bit crazy, but it's not especially dangerous. If a white person says that to a black person, that is real danger because white people have power, including government, law enforcement and the courts.
Similarly, imagining healthy, normal-sized adults, if a woman says to a man, 'I'm going to kick your ass', it's a bit threatening but not too serious. If a man says that to a women, it's very serious, dangerous to her, and he probably should be arrested.
Can you pick Waymos? I was in Austin with my daughter who Ubers quite a bit (because dear God there's nowhere to park in that damned city) this weekend. She called an Uber and a Waymo showed up and she was grateful because she prefers them too, but she said that she's not aware of a way to specify that you just want a Waymo.
This isn't being done because they want to, users have been asking for this since pretty early in ridesharing history. They're pre-empting the lawsuits and their consequences
Can someone explain to me how this is (or isn't) legal under Title VII?
It seems if this is fully legal because it's the customer making the decision, then pretty much any form of "in app" discrimination is legal as long as it's the customer doing the discrimination. How long till "I don't want a black/white/gay/etc driver" options show up?
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm
This kind of "discrimination" is a part of society, and has been tested in courts plenty of times.
Could you link to some cases where this kind of thing has been tested? I have an amateur interest in law and this issue is puzzling to me. It's not at all clear to me why it's okay to discriminate against Uber drivers based on the genitals they are born with, but not e.g. their skin color or religion.
Generally customer demand is not enough use this defense. Airlines tried using it to defend hiring only female flight attendants and lost.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...
Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ defense, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc. and Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co. Therefore, customer preference for females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight attendant. However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a BFOQ – for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies. Several breastaurants like Hooters have also used such requirements of femininity and female sex appeal under a BFOQ defense. Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,' that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service provided."
So basically the question to ask it "Is it a bona fide occupational qualification that the driver be female?" Seems like a high standard to reach. Arguments based on "feels" as in "I don't feel safe around this kind of person/employee" seem like the very kind of discrimination that the law has tried hard to eliminate. It's pre-judging someone based on sex, and deciding that they aren't safe even though they haven't done anything. I understand that women are often harassed, but the law already has a process for dealing with harassment.
I predict this kind of thing (apps that allow customers to discriminate on the basis of protected class) will spread and eventually be challenged in court. Curious how this will all play out and become settled law.
And that would be a good argument if we could see that the process really is used and trusted. Do we? What I see is the opposite; the ubers and bolts of this world only care as much they have to. So what is probably happening is that uber calculates this will be cheaper than dealing with the consequences of women losing trust and stopping using their services. If this is banned by the courts, they will move on to the next cheapest solution and so on.
What would interest me is, what would be a proper solution to this issue? Apart from Waymo, probably a surveillance/recording of all the interactions between the customer and the driver?
Slippery slope fallacy.
> "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." — George Orwell, Animal Farm
Women being harassed by Uber drivers isn't a necessary part of life, and wanting to address this issue isn't equivalent to literal Soviet communism. This quote is waaay out of place.
Someone else mentioned the analogy of patients preferring physicians of a given sex.
I would not be surprised if they find a way around this by just having riders 'select which driver you want'. Effectively putting the onus on the customer to do the discrimination.
1. Force the same market rate for female-only vs regular mode. This means a shortage of female drivers and higher wait times for users in that mode, but anyone who really wants it can use it.
2. Charge more for female-only mode to account for the lower supply, but pay the driver the same rate either way.
Lyft already has such a feature, and personally I've been getting into Empower more, which also has the feature. This app pays more for drivers due to not actually acting as a taxi company but simply connecting the driver and rider marketplaces, something Uber tried to do as well but failed due to legal challenges as well as keeping margin for themselves. Empower just charged $50 per month to drivers as a subscription fee for the service and then lets them keep all the actual ride money.
However, just as with a marketplace connector like TripAdvisor or TaskRabbit, your mileage may vary (literally) in terms of driver ratings and safety, due to Empower not doing as comprehensive background checks as Uber or Lyft, so it is up to your personal risk tolerance.
https://onlabor.org/january-25-2026
I think the lawsuits probably make sense. While you can claim that there is a statistical danger, you can make that same claim about a number of other protected characteristics. Would we allow riders to request only female, heterosexual, over 45, wealthy Quaker drivers, if that happens to be the statistically safest driver characteristic?
If characteristic X was race, religion or sexuality, I think people would be extremely opposed to this, and not even entertain the idea that this would be acceptable.
We need to call a spade a spade here. This is blindly terrible logic. It's crass sex discrimination, and it's affect people's ability to find employment, and it's almost certainly against the law.
Deciding we can just start discriminating against an entire class of people in employment or housing, just because their is a subset of that class committing crimes is a civil rights violation.
People need to stop treating this like it's somehow okay because it's men.
This same thing that keeps on happening when we try to reinvent things "without all that stuff that just adds friction." As with software, one should understand the underlying reasons for constraints in the old system before building the second one.
Banking -> crypto and NFT "without all that stuff..." -> wash trading.
Taxi service -> Uber "without all that employer stuff..." -> drivers with no background checks and no interview process
I understand part of this is routing around the damage of monopoly maintenance (medallion system, for example), but let's fix that instead of taking away the protections in place.
Sorry for the rant. I know this is like asking water to run uphill.
- The inside of the car is surveilled and made available for both parties after the ride.
- The intent is made clear, that this is to capture a trace of any harassment or misconduct. Hopefully making this statement puts all parties on their best behaviour.
- Any failure to comply by the driver, camera blocked or audio muffled, then driver gets penalised.
It would be cool if people have better ideas, but someone criticizing this workaround doesn't need to suggest something better, and it's not weird for them to lack better ideas but still post. It's a hard problem. And "better than nothing" might get an idea approved but doesn't let it escape criticism.
It sounds like you'd rather I shut up, then you know, actually do something.
Right now they have all the reasons in the world to be as hands-off on their checks as they can be. They don't behave like a business with employees. It costs nothing to accept almost anyone and then just weed out the worst of the worst to avoid brand damage.
But making these changes would cut into the bottom line too much. They want all the unemployable and dangerous people to work for them because they're so desperate that they'll accept the meager pay. So instead of making any deep, difficult structural changes, they ask the software team to add a checkbox to the app. The checkbox itself is fine by me, but it's just them taping over an issue that stems from the way they do business.
Dear readers, if you wish to get rid of the stop gap, advocate for this.
There are ways to report if a man has been sexual with a woman, but they somehow just don't get kicked out of the driver network.
Also just a simple example: Uber engineering blog is full of examples of how they rewrote their app in native Android then web then native again, but nothing about how to solve the real problems humans experience when driving with them.
It just feels that they view Uber as a simple logistic problem where drivers / riders are interchangeable and less like Tinder that tries to match people with similar scores abd kicks out the worst.
Edit: Germany has such a service https://www.femride.de/
What if somebody started a Whites-only gym because it made them feel safer?
Maybe some claim it's for safety but the fact they're often 24hr would decry that.
Hints: membership clubs, religious organizations (Gainz Я God)
For anyone reading who has not previously considered it, please imagine what it feels like to be in a moving, locked vehicle you're not in control of, in an unfamiliar place, with someone who is much stronger and taller than you who's not respecting your verbal boundaries. What guarantee do you have it will stop there? What could happen if I truly upset him? How much more unpleasant could it become for me? Meanwhile, I'm paying for this. Even with the option, I'm still paying with the extra time I willingly choose to wait.
Uber is a public accommodation. It cannot discriminate based on sex. If someone wanted to start a private club where women joined to drive and be driven in a not-for-profit way, that would also be legal.
If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?
On account of it's the customer choosing the service provider, albeit with the help of filters provided by an aggregator, instead of service providers denying service to customers based on their belonging to a class.
edit: I missed that you can, as a woman driver, also filter out male riders.
I don't see how the distinction is material.
Actually, in this case, the rider _is_ a (temporary) employer.
These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.
A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.
Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]
So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.
1. https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?... (Page 20)
Nobody seems to care that dating platforms (and porn I guess) are entirely built around racial selections, among others.
If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.
If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”
PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.
Even if you go "fair" and have the same number of drains regardless of size you often end up with lines for the women.
Most large place compensate by putting in way too many toilets on average or just hope there isn't a crush-time.
The best place to see this in action is at a stadium with 50/50 fans during half-time or other break.
I'm rather curious where this is actually the case, particularly as you claim it's not uncommon.
My experience has been the opposite, though I'd hardly claim it to be representative. My prior employer had all single-occupant, unisex bathrooms originally, until one woman high up the management chain demanded there be women's only bathrooms. So, a women's only placard was placed on a couple of the unisex bathrooms, and suddenly, guys had to semi-frequently wait on for the remaining available unisex bathrooms during the day.
It was very clearly discriminatory, and I have no problem claiming the reverse would be just as bad.
The larger accessibility room is also for parents with small children.
my workplace has a no perfume/cologne policy, and we have lawyers on staff, so itd be interesting to find out it is.
"No perfume" is pretty simple, but "no smelling like curry" would clearly be at or over the line.
Deep breath in... There are two types of discrimination. Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, let's call them Type I and Type II.
Type II discrimination is the evil awful kind we rightfully rail against. It is "treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex..."
Type I discrimination is of the broader sort; "an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, choosing accordingly." We run our lives with this kind of discrimination: is this food safe to eat? is this activity safe to participate in? do I trust this person given what I know about them?
>> Ideally, Discrimination I, applied to people, would mean judging each person as an individual, regardless of what group that person is part of. But here, as in other contexts, the ideal is seldom found among human beings in the real world, even among people who espouse that ideal. If you are walking at night down a lonely street, and see up ahead a shadowy figure in an alley, do you judge that person as an individual or do you cross the street and pass on the other side? The shadowy figure in the alley could turn out to be a kindly neighbor, out walking his dog. But, when making such decisions, a mistake on your part could be costly, up to and including costing you your life. [1]
This kind of discrimination is what we're talking about. I'd venture that not only is it OK, it is necessary. In this case, men that have had no background check, and whose form of employment is as an Uber driver are more likely to harass women (or do worse) than a female driver. Allowing women to make a selection based on this likelihood means that female customers that are alone can make choices to still use the service while reducing the overall risk.
Mitigation of this risk in normal taxi services take the form of background checks, bonds, and a chain of responsibility running from employer to employee to customer. It places more risk on the employer deliberately. Uber deliberately chooses to avoid this risk and responsibility. That choice is baked into their business model. That means enabling this kind of discrimination from their customers is a required feature of the service.
[1] Discrimination and Disparities, by Thomas Sowell
I'm failing to see how anything you say could be used as a guideline to pick between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination. The major distinction you draw between "Type II" and "Type I" is the fact that one is fueled by "arbitrary aversion" which is not a particularly useful distinction.
What if I denied entry to black people from my bar because ""they commit more crimes"" and ""are more likely to break stuff"", is it morally ok? Why not? My opinion is that no, it's not ok because the majority of people punished were never going to behave in an uncivil way.
The same logic can be easily applied to this situation. Are men more likely to behave sexually inappropriately (which ranges from verbal harassment to assault)? Sure. Is it the majority? Hell no, it's nowhere close.
(Of course it's worth nothing that the "majority" does not necessarily have 50.01%, it's just an arbitrary line you can draw as long as you are consistent about it)
In the case of a woman coming into contact with some driver and volunteering location information like her home address, she has little to no information to make that judgement. Providing her just that bit of information, and allowing her to discriminate based on it, makes her safer. Ideally, she'd have way more information than just whether the driver is male or female. The reputation information helps, but isn't always reliable.
So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon?
Logically then uber could add a "white only" option, "no queer" and "no leftist". (of course this is arbitrary but you can easily come up with a reason why: if you split any group of real people in two it's only natural that one group has an higher incidence of a negative trait)
This also has a second problem: what if we let the passenger know not only the sex but also if the driver ate fish in the morning (and hundreds of other useless facts)? Does that make it discrimination because they have far more information?
I guess not but then how do you decide what information is valuable in order to decide if there is enough information to judge the individual instead of going off statistics? How can you say that our theoretical racist patron is in fact racist and not going off the only valuable information?
That's a straw-man argument.
The reality is that if Uber rapes are an issue, and something like this is not allowed, women will just stop using it entirely.
Or special Uberpods will be developed where the driver is completely encased and the passenger has a "auto drive to police station" button.
I dislike Uber, I'd rather walk than take one, but if it has to exist, I think it's awesome they're doing this.
There is also a women-exclusive company in Berlin now: https://g-cars.co/
What about women drivers?
How will the boundaries of these classifications be determined, and what happens when someone tests these boundaries?
The headline is…
“Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US”
> It’s worth noting that the old school taxi companies did not have this problem of rampant sexual assault committed by their drivers.
Wait what? Did you not read a newspaper in the 80s and 90s? If you do a google search today for "taxi driver" and "sexual assault" you will not come up with nothing.
> Why? Because they performed background checks before hire.
99.9% of the taxi drivers in the US have and have always been independent contractors. Uber does background checks on all drivers in the US. A family member applied and was rejected because of a marijuana possession conviction when she was much younger in a state far far away from where she lives now.
https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/safety/driver-screening/ (this is much more screening that I've seen elsewhere, but maybe you think they are cutting corners?)
I never said there were no instances of sexual assault by taxi drivers; just pointing out that there’s a real crisis of rampant assault with Uber for which there are solutions that they’ve essentially refused to entertain because they don’t want to take responsibility for their drivers. I’m saying that these companies need to be held responsible for their role in this problem.
Some recent data:
> London (2016): In a rare direct comparison, there were 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault where the suspect was a taxi or private hire driver (including Uber). Uber drivers were involved in 32 (roughly 20%) of those cases. During this period, Uber accounted for over 30% of journeys in London but only 20% of the reported assaults, suggesting Uber drivers were statistically less likely to be involved in an incident than traditional taxi drivers in that market.
That is London, not the USA of course. Who knows what other factors were at play.
For the USA we have:
> Uber (2017–2022): Reported 12,522 serious sexual assaults. This occurred across approximately 6.3 billion trips, meaning these incidents happened in about 0.0002% of rides.
> Reporting Bias: Modern apps have "emergency" buttons and digital trip trails that make reporting easier and more traceable. Historical taxi assaults were often only recorded if a formal police report was filed, leading to significant underreporting.
> Victim Demographics: In Uber's 2021–2022 data, 42% of reporters were drivers and 56% were riders. Historical taxi data rarely distinguished between driver-on-passenger vs. passenger-on-driver incidents.
> Internal Data: A 2024 government report found that while some taxi companies collect incident data, they treat it as internal information and do not share it with the public
> I’m saying that these companies need to be held responsible for their role in this problem.
People suck, and they always have. The only way for 100% safety is self-driving taxis.
It would be better to have more filtering options for everyone, though. One might prefer a male driver, for example, or a black driver, and if one wishes to wait longer for the driver to arrive because of their narrow preferences, that should be their right.
"I like discrimination when it's good for me" is not a serious position.
you gotta stop thinking "low/high-trust" everywhere you put your eyes on.