Uber: A long history of bad trips for women

Uber, a taxi-sharing start-up valued at $18 billion, has had a history of trouble with women. Uber, which was co-founded five years ago by 38-year-old Travis Kalanick, doesn't employ any drivers directly - instead it establishes partnerships with local taxi companies. Ironically for a company that actually prides itself on providing a safe transport alternative to women, there have been a host of complaints about it being anti-women.

1.) In October, Sarah Lacy, editor of the technology site Pando Daily, wrote an article called "The horrific trickle down of Asshole culture," arguing that Uber has a "misogynistic culture" that puts women at risk as drivers and passengers. Lacy said she was "deleting her Uber app in protest over Uber's failure to take steps to safeguard women's safety". That was not the end of it. Buzzfeed reported that Uber’s senior vice president of business Emil Michael said in an off the record conversation that Uber would spend "a million dollars" to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists to dig up dirt on critics such as Lacy. Lacy responded by saying "Every woman using Uber should be scared”. Kalanick tweeted an apology to Lacy and said Michael’s comments “showed a lack of leadership, a lack of humanity, and a departure from our values and ideals”. He said, however, that “folks who makes mistakes can learn from them ... and that also goes for Emil”. 

2.) In April this year, Erin McCann, an assistant news editor for The Guardian, complained on Twitter about being thrown out of a cab in New York because the driver agreed to pick up an Uber customer instead. Josh Mohrer, the general manager for Uber in New York, responded, saying by reporting what had happened, McCann had "threatened" the driver's livelihood and ability to feed his family.

3.) In September 2013, Bridget Todd, a writer, activist and former Howard University lecturer tweeted that she'd been choked by the driver she'd ordered on Uber's smartphone app — apparently because he was angry at her interracial relationship.

4.) In March last year, The Washington Post reported that a 35-year-old limousine driver allegedly raped a 20-year-old passenger. The woman used Uber’s smartphone app to e-hail a black car from outside a bar on U Street in December, which is when the alleged incident occurred. A police complaint, however, was not filed.

Last month, a leading columnist in The Guardian Megan Carpentier called out Uber and said it had a "woman problem". She wrote: "Uber counts on its users feeling safe – it’s even part of the company's marketing. And people do still feel safe ordering a ride home from an app on their phone, despite occasional reports of crimes committed by drivers. Even I felt pretty safe booking an Uber as recently as last week, despite two disconcerting incidents this summer, one in which an Uber driver asked for my phone number after informing me how fantastic my t*** are, and another in which a driver started heading for a different state than the one in which I reside.

But after Buzzfeed's report that one Uber executive looked up a female reporter’s ride history and threatened to dig up dirt on another, I will admit that, really, I don’t feel safe with Uber anymore, and not because I’m a journalist – because I’m a woman".

Ironically, Uber was seen by many women as a means to allow them to work and live freely without worrying about how to get home. Ironically also, according to a Vanity Fair profile of Kalanick, Uber has hired David Plouffe, the high-profile mastermind behind the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, to handle its public policy and communications. Plouffe says he doesn't subscribe "to the idea that the company has an image problem,” and insists that when "you are a disrupter you are going to have a lot of people throwing arrows”. 

Wonder what he will have to say about what just happened in India.