“At Uber, we believe that when we make our platform better for women, we make it better for everyone. Across the US, women riders and drivers have told us they want the option to be matched with other women on trips. We’ve heard them – and now we’re introducing new ways to give them even more control over how they ride and drive. For the first time in the US, we’re launching Women Preferences – features designed to give women riders and drivers more choice, more confidence, and more flexibility when they use Uber,” says Uber in a statement announcing that late night driving is no longer just for heterosexual male sex offenders or homosexu- This joke’s a little much, isn’t it?
Yeah, probably going too far on this one. In all seriousness Uber’s plan is long overdue – though maybe it had to wait for a critical mass of women in the driver pool – and beyond the obvious safety benefit for women passengers it’s going to create legitimate earning opportunities for female drivers too, picking up extra cash on the side without having to worry too much about their own safety. Easy to imagine that some women drivers could just never toggle out of women-passengers only mode because their women passengers would never toggle out of women-drivers only mode, an infinite loop that also eventually discourages male scumbags from even bothering driving for Uber.