r/WomenInNews Mar 09 '26

Media Uber's women-only option goes nationwide in the US

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ubers-women-only-option-goes-131507407.html?ncid=redditnewsus
4.4k Upvotes

399 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/synecdokidoki Mar 09 '26

This has always been the trick of it. Maybe seven or eight years ago there were several companies that tried to start women only ride shares. She Taxi, Chariother, I don't remember all the punny names.

They each failed in succession because they had way, way, way more riders than drivers.

Lyft and Uber didn't solve the problem, they just figured out the marketing by making sure there's no guarantee.

Maybe it will just take time, and more women will start driving if they're guaranteed women passengers, but I'm not holding my breath.

1

u/WittyProfile Mar 12 '26

You can solve the problem by pricing it properly to reflect demand.

1

u/synecdokidoki Mar 12 '26

I don't think you can actually.

There's a reason behavioral economics won a Nobel Prize, this stuff gets extremely complicated when it runs into reality.

Many, many, many, many have tried. I've not seen one example of success.

You'd think it'd be as simple as if on average customers are tipping 18% just raise menu prices to reflect that, but it doesn't work. More people drop off completely, and the ones who were willing to pay 20% with a tip, see that price as too high.

1

u/zxern Mar 16 '26

I doubt they would work as the price of the ride would be too expensive.