Uber is finally bringing its “women preferences” ride feature to the US. The company confirmed the launch on Wednesday, with pilots set for Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the coming weeks.
The feature lets women riders opt to be matched with women drivers, boosting chances of a gender-specific ride. Riders will see a “women drivers” option after setting this preference. If wait times are long, they can choose other rides.
Women drivers can toggle a “women rider preference” to get trip requests from women only, or switch back to accepting all riders. 
This feature launched six years ago in Saudi Arabia and expanded to 40 countries, including India, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. Now it’s making its US debut.
Safety concerns have plagued ride-hailing. Uber’s latest US safety report revealed 36 physical assault fatalities in 2021-2022, up from previous years. Despite these incidents being extremely rare compared to the 1.8 billion US trips in that time, Uber added safety tools like verified rider badges and ride audio/video recording.
Sexual assault numbers dropped steadily since Uber started reporting them in 2017. Cases went from 5,981 in 2017-2018 down to 2,717 in 2021-2022.
Uber and Lyft have struggled to attract more female drivers—currently about 1 in 5 US Uber drivers are women. The “women preferences” feature aims to give both drivers and riders more control and possibly draw in more female users.
Uber was first to launch the feature globally, but rival Lyft was first to offer women-to-women ride matching in the US.
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