Hoping to assuage safety concerns — including increased scrutiny over sexual assaults — Uber is rolling out a new program in Chicago and 25 other cities Wednesday matching women drivers and passengers through its ride-hailing app.
The Women Preferences feature will allow women riders to request women drivers and vice versa. Teens of both genders will also be able to request women drivers.
“It’s giving women what they want, which is the choice to be matched with other women,” said Uber spokesperson Brooke Anderson. “Some women feel more comfortable being matched with other women, maybe in the middle of the night, or for a super-late trip.”
Launched in Saudi Arabia in 2019, Uber brought the Women Preferences feature to the U.S. in August, piloting the program in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit. Uber added Phoenix and Denver in September before the broader rollout to Chicago, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Dallas, Nashville and other markets Wednesday.
The feature enables women and teen riders to set a preference for a woman driver in the app. While not guaranteed, the setting “increases your chances of being matched with a woman driver,” the company said.
Women drivers can likewise use the feature to request trips with women riders, including during peak evening hours. About 1 in 5 Uber drivers in the U.S. are women, according to the company.
The move comes amid new reports about the prevalence of sexual assaults during Uber rides.
In August, a New York Times investigation found more than 400,000 Uber rides with reported incidents of sexual assault and misconduct between 2017 and 2022, according to court documents in litigation against the company.
On its website, Uber puts the number of sexual assaults at 12,522 over the same six-year period. The company has not published more recent data, but court records show reports of sexual assault and misconduct have increased since 2022, according to The New York Times.
The New York Times report prompted a House oversight subcommittee inquiry and an investigation by the New Jersey attorney general’s office into the issue of sexual assaults during Uber rides.
The company responded with an August blog post defending its safety record, transparency and reporting methodology, challenging the data used in the New York Times investigation as misleading.
Most of the 400,000 incidents, which Uber provided as part of an ongoing lawsuit, involved “less serious” reports that fell below the threshold of sexual assault, such as “flirting, staring or inappropriate language,” the company said.
In its published safety reports, Uber states that more than 99% of its 1.8 billion U.S. trips from 2021 through 2022 ended without a “critical safety incident” such as motor vehicle fatalities, physical assault resulting in fatality and sexual assault.
At the same time, Uber has implemented a number of initiatives in recent years to address safety.
Last year, Uber launched a rider verification program that added a blue checkmark badge to their profile for drivers to see before picking them up.
In 2023, a new feature on the Uber app allowed riders and drivers to make an audio recording during the trip to enhance safety and resolve disputes. The Record My Ride feature was later expanded to allow drivers to make a video recording of the trip using their smartphone camera.
Looking to cut down on carjacking incidents, in 2021 Uber launched a nationwide verification program for riders using payment methods such as prepaid debit cards, gift cards or Venmo.
While Anderson said the new Women Preferences feature is more than just a safety initiative, it nonetheless comes at a time when sexual assault has become an increasing concern for Uber and its customers.
Part of the difficulty in implementing the Women Preferences option is that there may not be enough women drivers to fully meet demand. But the advent of the program — giving women drivers the option to pick up only other women — may in fact help bolster those numbers, Anderson said.
“We didn’t launch this a couple of years ago because we weren’t confident that the experience could be as certain as it is today,” she said. “We would like more women to drive with Uber, and we would like this to encourage them to do that.”
