NGram

The article briefly talks about female drivers too, which is what I talking about.

Women drivers can toggle on a preference to receive trip requests from women riders, giving them even more control over how they earn.

(and the image/gif seems to imply it’ll exclusively accept rides from women riders)

But yes, if gender is self-declared then it’d be pretty easy to abuse by a malicious rider (I assume, without proof, that drivers have to be vetted somehow). If they require a phone number for new rider accounts it shouldn’t be too hard to keep banned malicious users out, though. There are more foolproof ways, but they have other issues (e.g. ID verification is a privacy nightmare and potentially transphobic depending on local government policies).

It’s been a little while since I’ve used any sort of taxi service because the local public transit is pretty good, but I know a lot of the USA isn’t so lucky there either. That’s more of a cultural problem though.

On a semi-related note, it’s quite ironic that Uber made a change for only their home nation on International Women’s Day.

That also only solves half of the problem. Female drivers also want to be safe and doing background checks on everyone who has an Uber account isn’t very practical.