Uber’s Goal: Hire 1 million Women Drivers

on March 10, 2015 at 2:31 pm

It’s an ambitious goal, even for a fast-growing startup like Uber, which doesn’t have a total of 1 million drivers globally yet.

As we all know, Uber’s reputation for supporting women is less than stellar — it’s not hard to find women who refuse to be passengers, let alone drivers. However, the ridesharing service just took a significant step toward gender equality: as part of a collaboration with the United Nations, it’s vowing to create 1 million jobs for women as Uber drivers by 2020. Just how it’ll accomplish this isn’t mentioned, but the hope is that the initiative will give women economic power they won’t otherwise have. Uber is promising updates on its progress, so you’ll likely know how well it’s doing well before those five years are up.

UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick said in a joint statement:

“Today, UN Women and Uber are launching a partnership to work together around the world toward a shared vision of equality and women’s empowerment.

“We intend to invest in long-term programs in local communities where we live and work, as Uber commits to creating 1,000,000 jobs for women globally on the Uber platform by 2020.