I imagine there also will be sex discrimination lawsuits. It just isn't legal to make decisions while employed based on whether or not you're a woman or likely as a customer as well.
> It just isn't legal to make decisions while employed based on whether or not you're a woman
It is legal as a customer, and as an employee. It’s not as an employer or a business offering a public accommodation in general, but even there there are some exceptions; whether this situation falls into them seems likely to get litigated.
I am pretty sure that, for example, an American employee at a fast-food place working alone late at night would not be allowed to discriminate against customers in this manner.
And it'll apply to the employer here, Uber, just as soon as they start preferentially hiring female gender drivers because of the imbalanced demand (for specific gender drivers) created by this discriminatory policy.
Uber is generally not legally the employer of drivers, and state and federal employment non-discrimination law generally applies only to actual employment, not independent contracting.
California had a court decision which would have done that generally, so they sponsored a ballot measure that excepted them, in exchange for other regulations. I'm not aware of any US jurisdictions where they haven't managed to avoid employer designation as a general rule.
But I know there are some wrinkles like workers comp disputes where individual drivers were found to be employees for workers comp purposes.
> There are clearly carveouts for this that are not views as discrimination by the vast majority of people.
Anytime you decide between options on a particular basis you are discriminating on that basis, that's what the word means.
Whether it is unacceptable (a moral judgement) or illegal (a legal judgement) discrimination are separate questions, but it absolutely and unquestionably is discrimination.
It is if it's a "bona fide job requirement", which it possibly could be. To take an extreme case, TSA agents only screen passengers of the same gender, so it'd be fair game to discriminate based on gender if for whatever reason the staffing ratios aren't balanced.
For Uber women have the choice to request a driver or passenger of the same gender, but men don't. For TSA, the same gender rule applies to both genders.
I really doubt it's as simple as “just not legal”; most anti-discrimination laws allow for reasonable exceptions, especially when women's safety is at stake.
There may still be lawsuits, but it's not obvious that Uber would lose.
It's not even clear that men are at all disadvantaged by current proposal, given that the preference isn't guaranteed to be honored, so female drivers most likely will still be expected to pick up male passengers. In that case, there is essentially no scenario where a man is refused service because of his sex, and it seems questionable whether there is any grounds for legal action at all.
For starters, the option doesn't appear to be available for men. Male drivers in particular may want to skip female passengers for fear of baseless allegations/lawsuits.
Second, if my personal experience with Uber is typical, there aren't anywhere near enough female drivers available to serve female customers. In order to make this system work, female passengers will either need to wait much longer (for an available female driver) OR Uber will have to increase wages for female drivers (to entice more drivers). That second option is likely illegal - generally speaking, we can't determine wages strictly on gender.
I don't necessarily have a problem with the notion of females selecting female drivers/customers, but I do have concerns about rolling out an actual real-life feature in a legal and fair/equitable manner.
So they will wait longer. I expect the market being market-y, women drivers will hear about it and enroll more to drive Uber. Still long wait for female waiting for female drivers, probably. Yet all this magic working without subsidies.
Random woman waiting longer is going to entice more female drivers at the existing wage? That doesn't seem likely to me. If Uber wants/needs more female drivers, they're going to need some sort of proactive enticement. But, as I said, wage discrimination isn't legal (probably). And general "DEI" programs are political targets right now (though, IMO, probably the best answer to find more female drivers).
I personally would like to be able to choose specifically for a male driver. I trust them more.
I'm being facetious of course, but it does highlight how bad sex discrimination is.
The problem with sex discrimination here is that it is a very crude workaround for a fundamental problem, namely not being safe with some Uber drivers. I'd like to point out at this point that as a dude (especially a scrawny one) you can also get murdered or (sexually) harassed by an Uber driver (male or female). This workaround does nothing for those cases. The fundamental problem will probably simply be properly solved with driverless taxis.
"discrimination is bad except when I like the results"
People who were historically against discrimination are well in to embracing it and don't see the problem at all. Why do we need to accept your preferred set of discriminations and not somebody else's?
Starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and some follow up classes, certain set of discriminationa were enshrined in federal and state law as being protected, so that's why.
No one, or at least no significant faction, has ever historically ever been against discrimination. Discrimination is making decisions.
People have been against making certain decisions on specific bases, limiting the acceptable conditions in which discrimiantion on particular bases is permissible, but literally no one has ever been against all discrimination on bases for which they sought limitations.
The change you perceive is entirely a result of you misunderstanding and oversimplifying to the point of utter nonsense the original position.
The common understanding (disregarding ideologues) of "discrimination" is still not a pedantic dictionary definition (which applies broadly to situations that don't even involve human interaction) is as given on Wikipedia (they do sometimes get politically charged ideas correct):
> Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong,[1] such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sexual orientation.[2] Discrimination typically leads to groups being unfairly treated on the basis of perceived statuses based on ethnic, racial, gender or religious categories.[2][3] It involves depriving members of one group of opportunities or privileges that are available to members of another group.[4]
The point is that we are interested in the cases deemed unfair.
The problem is that people have wildly different ideas of what is fair.
Just let people do what they want. If they want to pay premia for free association let them and if you think they're abusing it, hey that's arbitrage (ie free money) for you to take from them.
The more you worry about that and force people to do things they don't want to the more everyone pulls away from public socialization and the less there is for desperate people in general.
