You’re a woman in Pittsburgh on a Friday night at midnight, and the party is winding down. It’s time to go home, but you hesitate. Calling an Uber or Lyft means spinning the roulette wheel of a potential bad experience, the worst of which could be some kind of sexual assault or harassment.
The statistics bear this out. Uber’s latest U.S. safety report revealed 2,717 reported incidents in the “most serious categories” of sexual misconduct in the past two years, and the company is currently facing lawsuits alleging that it has failed to prevent driver assault on a systemic level. In 2021, Lyft reportedly received over 4,000 reports of sexual assault from its users between 2017 and 2019. The same report revealed that instances of sexual assault increased year after year.
Phylana Stowers is all too familiar with the challenges facing women in Pittsburgh seeking a rideshare late at night. This has driven her to work toward changing the local rideshare gig economy by founding Periwinkle Ladies Travel Club, a woman-led, membership-only rideshare service…