Uber, a company that’s had its fair share of safety issues concerning female passengers, has announced a new initiative to get more women behind the wheel.
Uber has pledged to create one million jobs for women drivers over the next four years. According to the company, the goal is to accelerate economic opportunity for women across the world.
“Today, UN Women and Uber are launching a partnership to work together around the world toward a shared vision of equality and women’s empowerment. We intend to invest in long-term programs in local communities where we live and work, as Uber commits to creating 1,000,000 jobs for women globally on the Uber platform by 2020,” says Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Apart from providing more jobs for women, the first thought that comes to mind with this announcement is that this could possibly lead to a safer ride service. There are a handful of companies out there which are trying to cater to the female demographic by offering all-female fleets – SheRides in NYC, for instance.
But according to Reuters, female passengers will not yet have the ability to request female drivers. Of course, this could be something that Uber looks at in the future.
Uber is currently facing a lawsuit from a woman in India who accused a driver of rape. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a few highly publicized incidents involving drivers assaulting or attempting to assault female passengers.
Uber has promised to continue to make the service safer.
Its unknown how many women drivers Uber employs worldwide, but in the US it’s about 160,000 – or 14% of its total workforce.
Image via Uber, Facebook