Ride-hailing app Uber, under the microscope due to a handful of driver assaults on passengers in some cities, pledged in a blog post to sign up one million female drivers globally by 2020.
The ride service did not provide comparable figures for how many women drivers are on the Uber service globally today. In the United States, about 14 per cent of its 160,000 drivers are female, the company said, and the company adds thousands more drivers each month.
"Uber does not require (minimum) hours, and it does not require a schedule," said Salle Yoo, Uber's general counsel, in an interview Monday about why women might find working for Uber attractive. "It offers the chance to be entrepreneurial, the chance to balance work and family."
The pledge comes as the rapidly expanding company deals with fallout over incidents of assaults by drivers from Boston and Chicago to New Delhi.
The female driver initiative is timed to a United Nations gathering in New York Tuesday evening celebrating women's rights, where Yoo will speak.
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