All-Female Ridesharing To Debut In Boston (qz.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Scores of women have reported assaults by Uber drivers... Now Jenni Avins reports at Quartz that a ride-sharing service that only uses women as drivers, Chariot for Women, is set to launch April 19 in Boston, featuring more stringent background checks and additional steps to ensure riders correctly match with their drivers.... "[U]nlike other services, Chariot for Women features a patent-pending technology that will provide both users and drivers with a code after a request is made that will need to be verified upon starting the ride," reports Glamour. But "whether it's legal or not is a different question," says Joseph L. Sulman. Quartz reports that "According to civil rights lawyers, Chariot for Women's female-only policies could put it squarely in the crosshairs of gender discrimination lawsuits, which would be difficult to win." Founder Michael Pelletz says he welcomes the legal challenge. "We want to show there's inequality in safety in our industry," says Pelletz. "We hope to go to the US Supreme Court to say that if there's safety involved, there's nothing wrong with providing a service for women."

Comments

This will be fun

[rossz]

I can't wait until someone claims they identify as female and demand the right to rideshare with the all female service.

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

How about government stop telling people which bathrooms they can use on private property?

How about each restaurant, barber shop, and store decide on their own which customers they are willing to serve and which customers can use which bathroom?

Have we learned nothing from slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws, all government mandated discrimination? When will people realize that government shouldn't get involved in these issues?

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, isn't it interesting though that the same type of service aimed only at white customers or only for a specific religion would cause a massive outcry ...

For certain definitions of "massive outry", true. But it's hard for people to argue their own discriminatory actions "for security" (ie safety) and then simultaneously argue that a woman-only service is somehow not okay. So, the people left are those that (1) think women can and are as bad as men and/or (2) think fundamentally this is no real sort of solution to a more fundamental problem (a lack of adequate background checks at Uber) that basically degenerates into "men are expendable".

... and also would be illegal?

And of course it's illegal. I hope they get slapped down fast and hard by the courts on this. Btw, I think it funny that impetus for this was a male Uber driver feeling threatened by a passenger. So, (1) we are now creating a service that makes it easier to target female drivers and (2) we're not even addressing the idea of background checks for passengers. So, entirely ass backwards.

Re:This will be fun

[x0ra]

Btw, it is worth to mention that Jim Crow laws were passed by Democrats... just sayin'

Re:This will be fun

[frovingslosh]

A quick scan of local on-line arrest records shows a majority of blacks committing violent crimes even though the black population is a minority. So the next logical step will be a white only version of Uber. Just for safety purposes, of course.

This is really a bold business move

[thecombatwombat]

This is not the first company to try this, what they don't say at least up front, is how tricky this business would be.

According to one in NY, She Taxis only 2% of drivers right now are women.

Will a lot more women flock to this job if they feel it's safer? It seems from a business point of view, these people are really banking on that being true. All law aside, it's an interesting experiment. I mean this dynamic comes up all the time in most conversations about gender disparity. "If we just got rid of all the harassment, there'd be far more women coders" is something I've heard plenty of times before. This is the closest thing to a controlled experiment we're ever going to see.

Re:Totally illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the few ones that actually makes sense.

That club doesn't exist because of rape or sexual assault at regular gyms, it occurs because women don't get treated well at normal gyms. Some of that is just the testosterone and the lack of skin covering clothes, but a lot of that is from women being jerks to each other whenever another woman is getting attention.

I was very briefly employed at a gym years back and even the female CEO of the chain told us to not talk to the women and to go find somebody that was visibly older and or unattractive so that the other women wouldn't complain about beautiful women being given too much attention.

It was rather sickening, but it wasn't surprising, women can be real cunts when it comes to better looking women or the perception that looks get anything.

Re: Totally illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no issue with women only gyms. My issue is with women who would deny me the peace and lack of drama in a male only gym, while still defending the need for female only gyms.

Can we see the stats?

[JustNiz]

Without any actual stats to back them up, I'm far more inclined to believe that this is just more feminazi man-hating bullshit than the result of a real epidemic of rapist Uber drivers.

Re:New Geek Ride Service

[thegarbz]

What a stupid idea. You're just going to alienate potential customers who will feel threatened by their drivers.

I will start a ride sharing service where the drivers have advanced knowledge in emacs alone, and potential customers need to show they aren't vi users before they get on.