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Good practice Imported

Lyft Women+ Connect: Gender-Based Rider-Driver Matching in the US Gig Economy

United States of America · San Francisco · See the United States of America profile · See the San Francisco profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 55% 63/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Lyft's Women+ Connect (Sept 2023, nationwide by 2024) lets women/nonbinary drivers and riders opt to match with each other; 67% of eligible drivers activated it, 99% kept it on. Lyft has not shown independent evidence it cut assaults (4,000+ documented 2017-19) that motivated it.

~50%
Women's share of Lyft riders
~23%
Women's share of Lyft drivers
4,000+
Sexual-assault-related incidents disclosed (2017-2019)
67%
Eligible drivers who opted into Women+ Connect
99%
Opted-in drivers who kept the feature enabled

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Lyft, Inc.
Period
2023-present
Keywords
gig economy, ride-hailing, platform safety, women's economic participation

Context

Women make up nearly half of Lyft's riders but only about 23% of its drivers, a gap the company attributes partly to safety concerns, after disclosing over 4,000 sexual-assault-related ride incidents (2017-2019) in mandated safety reports and a 2022 $25 million shareholder settlement over allegedly concealed safety issues. Launched September 2023 in five early-access US cities and expanded nationwide by early 2024, Women+ Connect is an opt-in preference prioritising matches between women/nonbinary riders and drivers (not guaranteed).

Results

Lyft reports 67% of eligible drivers opted into the feature, and that those who did kept it on 99% of the time.

Conclusions

NPR reported in September 2023 that Lyft declined to share updated ride-safety data or confirm whether assault rates fell after launch — so, unlike programmes with an externally co-published outcome study, the feature's safety rationale is evidenced only by adoption/usage statistics, not an independent evaluation of whether it achieved its stated safety goal.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Lyft product/trust-and-safety team

Conditions for success

  • Opt-in preference architecture rather than mandatory matching
  • Explicit inclusion of nonbinary drivers and riders alongside women

Common failure modes

  • No independent evaluation of whether the feature reduced assault rates
  • Match is a preference, not a guarantee — safety benefit is not structurally assured

Commonly funded by

Own resources / municipal budget

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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