"VanGo: An on-demand ride service for getting your kids and teens around. The founders say that, because “moms trust other moms,” 85 percent of drivers on their service are moms and all of them are women."
It appears so, because I remember thinking the same thing when https://www.gosafr.com/ launched (uber for women).
I recognize there are different safety concerns for men and women, but I do have a problem with companies like these. At least with safr, their advertised safety benefits for women come down to:
1) App/Tech features that would be beneficial for either gender (like extra monitoring by safr through the phone app, and "thorough" vetting/background checks of drivers).
2) Marketing relies heavily on "It's safer because your driver is a woman." which seems to be part of van go's pitch as well, and as a man i find particularly offensive that i'm being deemed unsafe around children/women simply because i'm a man.
That being said, I'm obviously not the target audience. And I believe it's legal because they don't discriminate against men who apply to be drivers/riders, they simply only target women in their marketing, so the people end up being almost entirely women. I would guess this is what vango will end up doing/saying about the gender split as well.
In some circumstances it is legal to hire based on sex/gender. Say changing room assistant. Proving a job can only realistically be done by 1 gender is a high bar though.
I doubt VanGo can do that. But they are not big enough to get sued yet. Also as another poster pointed out they cater to women but don't specifically screen out male drivers?
It's probably not legal for them to use sex as a hiring criteria, but it's legal for “all women” to be the outcome if the actual criteria are both facially neutral and sufficiently narrowly linked to job functions. Judging from VanGo’s website, they require 3+ years of childcare experience, with references and clean background check; the childcare experience filter alone, given how female-dominated that field is, is likely to result in an overwhelmingly female potential employer pool, a d their may be further bias in who chooses to apply to VanGo.
Pushing the 85% moms thing (which VanGo does, unlike the all women thing, on their webpage) is potentially problematic ; if they are advertising it, they are likely inclined to favor it, which is illegal (even if it was parents, not “moms").
I recognize there are different safety concerns for men and women, but I do have a problem with companies like these. At least with safr, their advertised safety benefits for women come down to:
1) App/Tech features that would be beneficial for either gender (like extra monitoring by safr through the phone app, and "thorough" vetting/background checks of drivers).
2) Marketing relies heavily on "It's safer because your driver is a woman." which seems to be part of van go's pitch as well, and as a man i find particularly offensive that i'm being deemed unsafe around children/women simply because i'm a man.
That being said, I'm obviously not the target audience. And I believe it's legal because they don't discriminate against men who apply to be drivers/riders, they simply only target women in their marketing, so the people end up being almost entirely women. I would guess this is what vango will end up doing/saying about the gender split as well.