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.
That’s a neat feature; I wonder why it’s explicitly not available to men (who would prefer a male driver for whatever reason)… I guess maybe they feel that would go against the stated goal of encouraging more women to sign up as drivers, but like… why? If nothing else, men with a preference for male drivers would ensure that more women / non-binary folks could get drivers matching their gender, since as they note there’s far more non-male riders than drivers.
I also wonder if it gives non-male drivers the option to only accept riders who match their gender, which it seems would be the more important facet to encouraging non-male drivers, if safety concerns are the reason they’re not signing up to do so.
Maybe it’s about men preferring female drivers and making it harder for other to get them. Woman may request a female driver to feel safer but men provably don’t do it so much for that reason.
It specifically says it lets riders request a driver matching their own gender, not any gender you want.
don’t I choose my gender?
If you’re non-binary, or not male, then you fall under this policy anyway; it only doesn’t apply to male-identifying males.
But couldn’t someone just claim to identify that way, and abuse the system? This is a really dumb idea.
I mean, sure, any system can be abused, but it’s a lot easier to prove intent when you now have to commit fraud to get in the situation to begin with.
Is it even legally fraud to identify as non-binary when you are not?
In the hypothetical provided, where someone intentionally misrepresents themselves in order to qualify for a service from a business that they otherwise would not have? For the express purpose of easier access to victims?
Not a lawyer but I’d certainly think so.
Does that mean that non-binary riders are only paired up with non-binary drivers, or are non-binary people and women grouped together?
All we have to go by is what’s in the article, which says:
That’s kind of open to interpretation; either they’re calling non-binary a separate gender and matches people accordingly, or they’re really saying “Woman - biological and trans - can choose a preference to match with woman drivers”.