Uber has expanded its women-preference ride feature nationwide in the United States, giving women riders and drivers across the country new options to match with other women on trips. The rollout marks a major expansion of a feature that Uber had previously tested in selected cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Detroit.
The feature, called “Women Preferences,” allows women riders to request a woman driver on demand, reserve a ride in advance with a woman driver, or turn on a setting that increases their chances of being matched with one. Women drivers can also choose to receive trip requests only from women riders and can switch that preference off at any time. Uber has also extended the option to teen accounts, allowing teen riders to request women drivers as well.
Uber says the nationwide expansion is intended to give women more control, comfort, and choice on the platform. The San Francisco-based company has said the feature is also meant to help attract more women drivers, a long-standing challenge in ride-hailing. Uber says about one-fifth of its U.S. drivers are women, though the share varies by market.
The move builds on a much longer international rollout. Uber first launched a version of the feature in Saudi Arabia in 2019, after women were granted the right to drive there, and the company says similar options are now available in more than 40 countries. Uber also says the feature has already supported more than 230 million trips globally.
The expansion comes as ride-hailing companies continue to face pressure over passenger and driver safety. Uber and Lyft have both dealt with years of reports involving sexual assault and harassment on their platforms. Uber says it has added multiple safety measures over time, including work with Lyft on a shared database of drivers removed over serious misconduct allegations.
At the same time, the feature is already drawing legal scrutiny. In California, two Uber drivers filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the policy discriminates against men and violates the state’s Unruh Act, which bars sex discrimination by business enterprises. Uber has sought to move the case into arbitration and has argued that the feature serves a legitimate public safety interest. Lyft is facing a similar lawsuit over its own women-focused matching option.
The policy has also drawn attention because it does not include nonbinary users in the same way. Uber has said the feature relies on the gender listed on drivers’ licenses for drivers and that, after consulting women’s safety organizations and LGBTQ+ groups, it determined this particular product was not the best way to serve nonbinary riders and drivers.
For Uber, the national rollout is both a safety move and a product test at scale. The company is betting that giving women more control over who they ride with can improve trust in the platform, even as legal and operational questions remain. In a market where speed and availability still drive many customer choices, the nationwide launch will test how much demand there is for a feature built around comfort and security rather than just convenience.
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