Lyft is introducing a new feature that lets women and non-binary riders choose a preference to match with drivers of the same gender.
The ride-hailing company said it was a “highly requested feature” in a blog post Tuesday, saying the new feature allows women and non-binary people to “feel that much more confident” in using Lyft and also hopefully encourage more women to sign up to be drivers to access its “flexible earning opportunities.”
The service, called “Women+ Connect,” is rolling out in the coming months. Riders can turn on the option in the Lyft app, however the company warns that it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be matched with a women or non-binary person if one of those people aren’t nearby. Both the riders and drivers will need to opt-in to the feature for it work and riders must chose a gender for it to work.
Technically nothing. There is no gatekeeping in being non-binary along the lines of presentation. But you claiming this as a passenger does not effect the other passengers who are made to feel safer by the adoption of this option. A fair number of female drivers in the service are also still likely to drive for male clients regularly anyway.
However if all drivers have protections for drivers to shut down abuses by scummy clients who use the opportunity of a temporarily captive audience to be disgusting towards drivers then this overall becomes less of a concern.
Almost all forms of accommodation leave certain paths open for abuse by bad actors. Erring on the side of the person who needs additional help participating in society is usually the more ethical choice because while a bad actor can be a pain there’s usually already laws on the books or policies that can be enacted that allow you to deal with one. For the person seeking accommodation the cost of not having access can mean the world becomes a smaller and/or more dangerous place because of reasons that have nothing to do with them. In some ways that can emotionally be looked at as “letting the assholes win”.
I had the same initial reaction as Tender, but your comment made me realize that not using this policy doesn’t really help keep drivers safe anyway. Plus, a driver can pull over and make a passenger get out, but a passenger can’t force the driver to let them out as easily.
In general if someone wants to do you harm getting in their car and being transported to a secondary location causes survival rates to plummet. Drivers do have more options by default than their passenger unless the passenger is holding them at gunpoint.
There’s also a stunning number of cases of male Uber and Lyft drivers stalking female clients meaning the threat comes at first point of contact when someone learns where you live.