At the start of the year, Bolt launched a feature where women riders could request rides specifically from women drivers and now Uber has a similar feature available.

The feature is known as “Women Preferred View” and it allows female drivers to opt into only accepting rides requested by women. Whether Uber will extend this functionality to riders so that women can request rides from other women, is unclear at this stage.

“We have already doubled the number of women in our active driver base and launching the ‘Women Preferred View’ feature is another positive move towards paving the way for more women to take part in the ridesharing industry. We are also excited that this feature enables current female drivers with the power of choice and convenience when using the Uber app,” explains head of policy for Uber Sub Saharan Africa, Busisiwe Khaba.

The “Women Preferred View” feature has already been rolled out in places like Brazil, Mexico and Egypt. Uber says, that in these countries, it has seen the number of women drivers double.

On the rider side of things, riders will have to specify their gender when a female driver has opted to only take requests from women.

Just in case men try to abuse this feature by lying about their gender, drivers can cancel the trip should they discover the rider is male and it won’t affect their cancellation record.

Comparing Uber’s offering to Bolt’s, Bolt is better from a user perspective, but hopefully Uber can add that the option to request a ride from a female driver for users.

With that having been said, this feature has been a long time coming and we hope that it helps female driver feel and be safer while helping folks get around.