https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9035442/jenna-price-ubers-troubling-safety-record-appalling-sexual-harassment-figures/
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Turns out it's true. I'm a man-hater, #notallmen of course.
But there are so many bad ones to choose from, it may be better to throw out both the baby and the bathwater at the rate the members of this gender are going.
News this week that Uber, the ride-share service, is in deep trouble. Again.
In the US, it received reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in almost every eight minutes between 2017 and 2022, writes Emily Steel in The New York Times.
And it's not doing anything about it, despite having the capacity to do so. Interesting to note then that of all the gig economy firms in the US, Uber is the one absolutely smashing it, with a nearly 20 per cent increase in revenue from one year to the next, looking just at the second quarter. It has the money, clearly. It doesn't have the will.
God knows how it's doing here in Australia, although in 2021, Uber revealed it received more than 500 complaints of sexual misconduct and assault in a six-month period from passengers and drivers, about three a day.
An audit of its systems showed alleged perpetrators were not always removed from its platform, including one driver who offered free rides in exchange for sex.
I mean, do we actually need Uber to say anything when we know this happens. As the young victim-survivor said, "What happened to me in November 2021 made me feel like there was no point," she said in May this year, three-and-a-half years after being indecently assaulted by an Uber driver. When she first reported it, she was told not to expect anything to happen.
When I wrote to Uber in Australia asking for a response to the NYT story I expected a reply next week.
The company must be feeling extreme ick so the response was quick. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't have any specific safety incident data in Australia. Why collect something when you know he answer will be terrifying?
But in a general corporate response on its website to the story, it says it's done a huge amount, huuuuge. OK, not exactly.
But it does say: "Uber is not immune to this deeply ingrained and troubling problem-it persists across all parts of life and modes of transportation-but that hasn't stopped us from continually strengthening our technology, policies, and procedures to improve safety."
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports women are twice as likely as men to experience sexual harassment over their lifetimes. And what does that constitute? Inappropriate comments about body or sex life, unwanted touching, grabbing, kissing or fondling. What is the matter with people?
And before the losers in comments start telling me about how women are perpetrators, too, yes, they are.
In tiny teeny numbers. That STILL doesn't make it right. Of the 1.3 million women who experienced sexual harassment, 1.2 million experienced it at the wandering hands and worse of a man.
Just over 310,000 men experienced sexual harassment by a man. So it's men who are the problem because they harass both men and women.
Are women now fighting back and reporting every single assault on their beings? Doubt it so much. I mean, who has their backs?
You can't just rely on families, friends and incredible lawyers to support women through these traumatic events.
But this week one woman was seen, heard and compensated for what happened to her at work.
A young Nepalese casual employee at a Mad Mex franchise was awarded $305,000 by the Federal Court for the sexual harassment she copped when she worked at the fast-food outlet. The details of the case are truly nauseating.
Plenty of appalling comments and jokes. "On multiple occasions, isolated her in his car, showed her porn and simulated sexual acts using sex toys," human rights and discrimination lawyer Prabha Nandagopal wrote in Women's Agenda. Nandagopal has founded a platform to provide independent, trauma-informed reporting and wraparound support, including anonymous options.
I'm just trying to think about how we might change the culture of male entitlement.
How would you teach boys that the way Donald Trump - and Andrew Tate for that matter - talk about women is all wrong. It is not for Trump to say that a woman was stolen from him, which is what he said when trying to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein. Trump says he fell out with Epstein because the convicted sex offender "stole" young women, including Virginia Giuffre (who died by suicide earlier this year), from his Mar-a-Lago club. It is not for Tate to describe his sister as her husband's property.
Yes, these are extreme cases, but the liberties men take at work reveal this thinking is widespread. Health services across the country have rates of sexual harassment at work, which makes you wonder whether the men involved understand what the word health actually means.
Men, just FYI, women are not your property. It's been centuries since we were your chattels and yet some of you don't get this, either in what you say or how you behave.
It also irks me to say that some companies are still trying to escape their moral obligations both here and internationally. How is that the gorgeous Julia Ormond is still trying to get her former agency to take responsibility for its employment of Harvey Weinstein?
There are stories like Ormond's everywhere - but we don't always hear about them. And sure, it's not all men who behaved like the Uber driver or who behave like sex offender Weinstein. But there are enough of them to make every single woman unsafe.
So how are we going to fix men? Any ideas?
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#FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #misogyny #sexism #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety
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