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

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

[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.