Uber’s 'Women Drivers' Option Is Just the Start of the Sexual Assault Reckoning It Needs
Last year, the world’s largest rideshare company, Uber, disclosed 12,522 instances between 2017-2022 of what it deemed “serious sexual assaults” that occurred in the course of paid rides. A sobering number, to be certain, but one that was ultimately only scratching the tip of the iceberg. Subsequent reporting revealed that there were actually more than 400,000 total trips during this period that resulted in reports of sexual assault and less serious “sexual misconduct,” which must still be merely a fraction of what actually occurred, given that these are only the incidents that resulted in formal reports, rather than the ones that were ignored or excused by victims. The company’s official stance continues to be that “there is no ‘tolerable’ level of sexual assault,” according to Hannah Nilles, Uber’s head of safety for the Americas, but when the company notes that it processes millions of rides per day, and that “99.9%” occur without an incident, that’s all the remaining incidents can ultimately sound like: Tolerable levels of doing business. That is, until the company gets held legally liable and needs to pay up.
That’s what happened to Uber in early February, with the settlement of a landmark civil case in which the rideshare company was found legally responsible for a 2023 assault, and ordered to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said she was raped by one of its drivers. It was notably less than the sum initially sought by the woman’s lawyers, and the jury involved did not find Uber to be “negligent or have defective safety systems,” but it’s still a massively important precedent because the jury found that the driver was functioning as an “apparent agent” of the company, making Uber liable for their employee’s actions. Uber, and other rideshare competitors, have always attempted to shrug this responsibility by claiming that their gig economy workers are all “independent contractors” and thus outside of any kind of company overview or legal liability. The decision thus potentially opens it up to much more future litigation from similar assault cases. Uber said at the time that it planned to appeal the verdict, but in the meantime you can’t help but think that it played a role in the decision to finally take their “Women Drivers” option worldwide, as the company announced this week.
That feature, also referred to as “Women Preferences,” mirrors one that competitor Lyft has already had in effect since 2024, and was confirmed to be going nationwide this week by Uber in a blog post. In said post, the company said that Women Preferences was “created because women asked for it,” and “what began in 2019 after women in Saudi Arabia gained the right to drive and we piloted Women Preferences has grown into a global movement as women around the world embrace more control over how they use Uber.” The feature is now available for drivers in more than 40 countries, and for riders in seven countries, which does make one wonder what took so long exactly in bringing it fully to the United States after piloting it in Uber’s hometown of San Francisco. A hype video focused more on the utility of the tool for female drivers can be seen below. Uber is no doubt hoping that it will lead to more women signing up to be drivers in the first place, given that they make up only roughly 20% of the driver pool in the United States … which also calls into question whether there will really be enough women drivers to go around if customers choose to use the Women Preferences feature.
From a common sense standpoint of safety, at least giving female drivers and riders the option to use Women Preferences does feel like an obvious and welcome move. Melody Flores, a 41-year-old single mother highlighted by The Associated Press who drives for Uber overnight in San Francisco, said that the feature had both improved her business and made her feel more at ease with working such late shifts, when many of her would-be passengers would otherwise have been drunk males “who would make lewd comments.” Since the debut of the feature, on the other hand, “now she mostly picks up women coming out of late shifts at hospitals or restaurants or leaving parties.” It’s not difficult to imagine which of these scenarios is more pleasant for the woman hustling to support her child by driving for Uber.
That said, the Women Drivers or Women Preferences feature is likely to face more than a few legal challenges from Uber’s own disgruntled labor force. In California, two male Uber drivers filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in November, arguing that the Women Preferences feature would negatively impact their own business and constituted a violation of the state’s Unruh Act, which prohibits sex-based discrimination by businesses because it will give female drivers access to a bigger pool of potential passengers. A similar lawsuit was likewise filed against Lyft in response to its own Women+Connect feature in 2024, and has not yet gone to trial. The Uber lawsuit, meanwhile, also takes the time to argue that Uber’s new program “reinforces the gender stereotype that men are more dangerous than women.”
To the latter point: Fuck off entirely with that mode of argument. There is no form of data one can furnish that will suggest anything other than the fact that yes, men are more dangerous than women—if they weren’t, then there would be no reason for the feature to exist in the first place. Roughly 80% of violent crime in the U.S., just to start with, is committed by men. The male Uber drivers in this suit are going to be fighting a truly pointless battle if they want to focus on the “stereotype” that men are more dangerous, particularly when they have a potentially more compelling argument on the economic side of their discrimination suit. Even there, though, legal experts seem to feel that Uber is likely to prevail, in part because they can argue “the features address an urgent business need to protect clients.”
“Lowering a client’s risk of rape—is that a business necessity?” asked lawyer Ann Olivarius, a sex discrimination case specialist, to The Associated Press. “I would argue that it is a business necessity.”
Uber tackles its “thousands of sexual assault reports” problem by letting women hide from men. While lawyers argue over whether safety is a “business necessity,” the app still ignores nonbinary users, proving corporate inclusion has very specific, profitable boundaries.
— Flingjore (@flingjore.com) Mar 10, 2026 at 4:52 PM
Before we go too far out of our way to credit the progressivism of a corporation with more than $50 billion in revenue in 2025, we should also note that Uber’s new Women Preferences feature will likely fail one particular demographic: Nonbinary and trans drivers. Unlike Lyft’s Women+Connect feature, Uber’s program is not open at all to either riders or drivers who have noted themselves as nonbinary in their profiles. It will also rely entirely on the gender listed on the driver’s licenses of its employees, which means that transgender women drivers will be at the mercy of what it happens to say on their piece of plastic–something they may have no choice in, given that a state like Kansas recently invalidated the licenses of about 1,700 transpeople for not reflecting their sex assigned at birth. Uber is effectively trying to just wash its hands of this entire question and ignore this segment of its drivers, telling the AP that “we consulted with various women’s safety organizations and LGBTQ+ groups while designing this feature and determined that it is not the best way to serve non-binary riders or drivers.” Ah, so it turns out the “best way to serve” those employees is just to leave them at the mercy of their state. Very convenient for Uber, is it not?
Ultimately, assuming it survives any number of potential legal challenges from male drivers who (understandably) feel that their livelihoods may be threatened to some degree, Uber’s Women Preferences feature represents what is likely a step in the right direction from a consumer and social standpoint in particular. We can’t begrudge a single father who is concerned that he may make less money driving for the rideshare company in the future, but that father should consult the 400,000-plus instances of sexual assault and misconduct that happened in U.S. Uber rides between 2017-2022 if he wants to understand why such a feature has been not just requested but demanded by the company’s clientele. And for Uber, which is now more vulnerable to litigation than it has been in the past thanks to the recent ruling, the company is now more incentivized to protect its riders and drivers than it ever has been. Would that we could occasionally make some progress without lawsuits, but if the outcome is safer rides, it’s still a win.