Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Female Uber Drivers Get Paid Less Than Men, Says Study (recode.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the pay-discrimination dept.

According to a new study by Uber and Stanford economists, male Uber drivers get paid 7 percent more than their female counterparts in the U.S. "That's surprising, because Uber's driver assignments and pay are gender-blind, meaning a driver's gender isn't considered when matching riders or assigning fares," reports Recode. "Rather, pay has to do with trip length, distance and whether it's happening during surge-price hours or not." From the report: There are more male drivers -- women make up 27 percent of Uber drivers in the U.S. -- and male drivers tend to work longer hours. However, on an hourly rate, women still make less, according to the data, which measured trips by 1.8 million drivers from 2015 to 2017. According to the study, discrimination on the customer side isn't the reason for the pay gap, either. So why are female Uber drivers paid less than men? The study points to three reasons that make the gap disappear:

When and where: The times and places female Uber drivers work seem to be less profitable. That could be fewer overnight shifts, shifts with shorter wait times or surge-price shifts than men.
Driver experience: Drivers who've been with Uber longer get paid more, on account of knowing which routes and times tend to pay more. In general, men work for Uber longer than women so they are more experienced. The attrition rate after six months is 77 percent for women and 65 percent for men.
Speed: Male Uber drivers conduct more trips per hour than women, meaning they're actually driving faster, according to the data. More trips mean more money. About 50 percent of the earnings gap is explained away by differences in driving speed.

23 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Shocking. by poptix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Turns out the wage gap really is simply because of personal choices.

    --
    Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
    1. Re: Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Equal pay for eeual work. Sums it up nicely.

    2. Re:Shocking. by aussiekrom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Beyond being able to state that fact, it also allows anyone who wants to earn more see specifically what factors they might be able to change to do so.

    3. Re:Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Turns out the wage gap really is simply because of personal choices.

      In other news, the leading cause of poverty (that is, people who *become* poor) is getting knocked up at a young age and having a bunch of children you cannot afford instead of completing your education and establishing a career.

      Yet if you dare suggest things like delayed gratification, birth control, the fact that we all know where babies come from ... well it's amazing how people will villify you for that. Even people who did it that way themselves!

    4. Re:Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Turns out, women aren't fucking stupid enough to drive for Uber.

    5. Re:Shocking. by david_thornley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The next step is to investigate those personal choices. Why are women not taking the more profitable shifts? Why are they dropping out as drivers more than men? Why are we rewarding people for speeding? This just kicks the can a way down the road, rather than explaining everything.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    6. Re:Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In your troll universe, parents who already have careers never get laid off and lose their income.

      For one who so quickly calls "troll!" you sure do seem to have difficulty with reading comprehension. Assuming your "misunderstanding" was not intentional, of course.

      You see, getting laid off, otherwise losing a job/career, becoming disabled, etc. are also counted when causes of poverty are studied. Believe it or not, they're not in the same category as "oops, I'm still in my teens and got knocked up!" Yes, a minority of the time people become poor through no fault of their own, but that's not what "leading cause" means. This is easy to understand, except of course that failing to understand it gives you something to rail against. That's what matters, right?

      Sorry, this is not the easy slam-dunk victory you seem to have wanted. You are not the clever guy who noticed what others have overlooked all along. Shockingly, not everyone who disagrees with you is stupid. Care to argue with facts and reason? If you were raised by a single mother or something like that, you should admit you have a personal bias here. That would demonstrate integrity, emotional maturity, and the ability to be objective.

    7. Re:Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Last I checked, all the people born that I know about had two parents, one male and one female. This suggests that it isn't just the woman who's making that choice.

      Female selection is seen all throught nature, including in humans. The female generally has more power in a relationship. She generally decides when they have sex, and a host of other important decisions. Did you ever meet a woman who was deathly afraid that her man might "put her in the doghouse"? Didn't think so. If the woman wants to abort the baby, the man legally has no say at all in the matter. If she wants to have it, same deal. Men have exactly one effective form of non-permanent birth control while women have about a dozen. This is not a level playing field. How can you pretend that it is?!

      With greater power comes greater responsibility. Of course the male bears some responsibility. The law recognizes that in the only way that it can, by making him pay child support. But the female has more power in this situation. It is therefore resonable to expect her to bear a bit more responsibility. If the roles were reversed you'd have no problem accepting this, likely because the "woman as victim" narrative is still quite prevalent (makes you feel "noble" like a White Knight) no matter how strong the evidence against it is.

    8. Re:Shocking. by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Turns out the wage gap really is simply because of personal choices.

      You are obviously mistaken. What's happening here is that the statistics are obviously sexist, and probably misogynistic as well. I'm sure if I could be bothered to RTFA it would also become apparent that the statistics are not only racist but homophobic too. I even heard from a friend, who's sisters ex-boyfriend's third cousin's step daughter said that these very same statistics are part of a neo-Nazi group and abuses puppies on Thursdays.

    9. Re:Shocking. by Wycliffe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In your troll universe, parents who already have careers never get laid off and lose their income.

      Parents who already have degrees and careers tend to be able to recover quicker. The #1 reason for extreme poverty is out of wedlock children and having children young. That being said, there is likely some selection bias there. Many people who plan on going to college intentionally hold off on having children where people who have no plans to go to college have less incentive to wait to have children. Sure there are other reasons for poverty like health problems, etc... but that doesn't negate the fact that the #1 preventable way of staying out of poverty is delaying children until you are stable.

    10. Re:Shocking. by yuriklastalov · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not just the statistics which are bigoted. It turns out that all math and science are White Supremacist, so pretty much everything just needs to be destroyed so we can have our perfectly Diverse Utopia.

    11. Re:Shocking. by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The only gap there is what women *earn* not pay. If women go out and decide to work at a mine as a digger, they're going to be paid $20/hr just the same as a man. The man on the otherhand will be more likely to take that extra 20hrs/week in OT, and she is not. If a woman goes out and becomes a truck driver, she's going to make that same $0.60-0.70/mile plus dock-in/downtime repairs. But she's also not going to take higher stress routes through the NE corridor which have bonus rate pay because city/traffic volume. Where as a man will, repeatedly because it pushes his per/mile payout over $1.08/hr. But according to you and the author of that article, she's being *paid* less in both cases.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    12. Re:Shocking. by aphelion_rock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They get paid the same, it is just that men prefer to work longer hours, take on riskier jobs and probably take less breaks/ spend less time chatting than women..

    13. Re:Shocking. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, and importantly we can do without Slashdot's click bait like headline.

      The headline should have read 'female uber drivers earn less than men'.

    14. Re:Shocking. by ckatko · · Score: 4, Informative

      The personal choices are already known.

      Women choose quality of life, over raw income. That's because only the male's income (as a number) is a signal of worth, whereas women don't have that requirement. Any man, will date any woman, no matter how crappy her job is. And women choose happiness over shitty hours. So men work more crap shifts to get more money... to demonstrate their value to society and potential mates.

      And this isn't some new theory. It's been settled in the scientific community forever.

    15. Re: Shocking. by PaulRivers10 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've been saying this forever. How many guys do you know move in with their girlfriend and live off her paying the rent? How many guys do you know have their girlfriend frequently pay for their meals? How many girls are mocked by guys because they still live at home? Not a lot. You know why? Because don't NEED to do the extra work to make more money like men do. Women earn less money because they can. Because they have a backup plan that involves a guy paying for their stuff. Feminism is about sacrificing women's happiness for more profits. That's why it hates families, sabotages relationships, promotes promiscous sex while fearing emotionally bonding sex. Because by taking away options from women, it forces women to make more sacrifices for money. If women are miserable it doesn't care, as long as women are more profitable.

    16. Re:Shocking. by mjwx · · Score: 3, Informative

      Turns out the wage gap really is simply because of personal choices.

      In other news, the leading cause of poverty (that is, people who *become* poor) is getting knocked up at a young age and having a bunch of children you cannot afford instead of completing your education and establishing a career.

      Yet if you dare suggest things like delayed gratification, birth control, the fact that we all know where babies come from ... well it's amazing how people will villify you for that. Even people who did it that way themselves!

      I agree with your point about life choices... but the leading cause of poverty is still being born into poverty. A young girl from Bello, Colombia isn't going to magically elevate herself out of that place because she resists having a kid, it still takes money to go to school, money her family is short of.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    17. Re: Shocking. by MisterFnortner · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Equal pay for equal work is utopian nonsense since there is no way to a) gauge work effort, and b) work is an input not an output. Better: equal pay for equal value. Most employers understand this implicitly. Case in point, women Uber drivers 'work' their auto and their calls just like men, but don't make as much per hour. They are not doing the valuable work that men are.

  2. Are we different by Doub · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, it turns out women and men are different. Are we on the verge of finding a way to tell a man from a woman?

  3. feminists BTFO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So in a completely gender blind pay scheme, women still manage to make less then men?
    Can all of you please shut the fuck up about the pay gap now?
    It's clear that any remaining difference is caused by women themselves.

  4. "Get paid less" vs. "earn less" by katz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Glancing quickly at the headline, "Even female Uber drivers get paid less", one may get the impression that women drivers are discriminated against. The article could have gone with "Even female Uber drivers earn less than male drivers", but that phrase doesn't carry the same biting edge, does it..

  5. fixed that for you... by SchroedingersCat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Female Uber Drivers EARN Less Than Men, Says Study

  6. Re:Women aren't aggressive by stoborrobots · · Score: 5, Informative

    The relevant numbers are an average of 19.5 miles per hour for men in Chicago, vs 18.8 for women in Chicago.

    --
    "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco