By: Rev. Katrena King
May 5, 2026

Women Drivers

The last time I was traveling for work, I opened the Uber app to hail a ride to the airport. To my curiosity and surprise, I saw a shiny new option: “Women Drivers.” Could it be? My thoughts began to soar in a thousand different directions—which is when I realized that the fare rate for Women Drivers was $10 cheaper than the UberX rate. While that sounded good to my pocketbook, it felt bad to my spirit. So, I booked it anyway; I’d make up for it later with a tip.

Once in the car with my driver, we talked about the new Women Drivers option. The first thing she shared is that she is trying to make a living, but at the same time, she’d also like to “save all the women in the world, one woman at a time.” Nothing makes her happier than to look in her rearview mirror and see a woman who has been in her car for an hour, asleep. To her, this represents that she is doing her job right—that her riders feel safe and comfortable enough to doze off on their trip to anywhere.

I asked her about the lower fare rate for Women Drivers. She shared that oftentimes, she’ll see Women Drivers requested as a fare option, but she has to overlook them for UberX fares which are paid at higher rates. “You have to work harder to be fairly compensated. I’d love to take [Women Drivers] fares but they pay less.” Something about this felt backwards to me. I explained to my driver that when I saw the Women Drivers option and was safely in the car with her, I was able to exhale in a space where I didn’t realize that I’d even been holding my breath.

I pondered aloud that I was willing to pay a premium for the sense of security that a woman Uber driver brings. What if a woman Uber driver had the same ability to exhale, knowing that a woman fare would be getting into her car? On International Women’s Day, Uber announced the new Women Drivers feature.[1] It seemed to tick all of the boxes, including on-demand requests, trip reservations, and setting preferences for women drivers in the app settings.[2] However, Uber didn’t mention anything about how this might impact pay or wages.

Before writing this article, I would go on to book two more Women Drivers rides, with each driver sharing similar sentiments as the first. These are women, trying to make a living. These are women, having to spend extra time and effort to do what they see as morally right. These are women, waiting to exhale. What if there were a way for these drivers to make the same rate of fare for Women Drivers requests as they do for UberX requests?

In the days since these trips, I have seen the fare rates for Women Drivers and UberX be much more consistent and often the same. Perhaps, Uber was silently subsidizing a new fare rate without telling the public. Perhaps not. Either way, transparency is key. Without transparency and data, we will find ourselves making assumptions for better or for worse.  

The Gender Pay Gap

When we think of the gender pay gap, it might feel like a mythical thing. We’ve always heard it exists, but perhaps we’ve never seen it. Or maybe we know it exists, because we witnessed it or experienced it ourselves. Either way, the conflicting messaging and anecdotes we hear and see can leave us questioning. The good and bad news is that there is data that confirms the existence of the gender pay gap.

The Gender Pay Gap is “typically measured as an earnings ratio comparing male and female workers.”[3] The Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program shares that part of the Gender Pay Gap could potentially be explained away based on “disparities in experience and education” and that “typical careers for women often pay less.”[4] However, they also suggest that “discrimination is still a problem.”[5]

This year, Equal Pay Day fell on March 26, 2026. Each year’s date represents the number of additional days into the new year that women have to work to make the same amount that men did in the year before.[6] This year, women make 81% of what men make for full-time, year-round workers.[7] If you add in part-time and seasonal workers, that rate is 76% of what men make.[8]And that’s just looking at women, broadly. Did you know that there are 9 different Equal Pay Days observed in 2026?[9]

The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) highlights each of these because of pay disparities even within the same gender.[10] Gender is only one part of who we are, and its intersectionality with any number of other identifiers influences the nuanced way that the pay gap needs to be addressed. The work continues on…

In the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case, Lilly Ledbetter received an anonymous tip that she was being paid 40% less than her male counterparts.[11] Ledbetter stated: “If that hadn’t happened, I would never have known because I worked for a corporation that prohibited employees from talking about their pay.”[12] Ledbetter didn’t receive this tip until she had worked for Goodyear for 19 years.[13] The Supreme Court eventually ruled that a 180-day statute of limitations from the initial wage discrimination disallowed her from pursuing her claim against Goodyear.[14] In 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, amending Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to state that the 180-day limitation restarts every time a paycheck impacted by pay discrimination is issued.[15]

In Ledbetter’s situation, transparency might have helped to avoid this gender pay discrimination. Oftentimes, speculation can swirl around matters where there is limited transparency. It is very easy to turn a “what if” into a full-blown conspiracy theory. Perhaps we should instead be asking how we can address what we don’t really know. Gathering data can be a great starting point for conversation. We can make assumptions all over the place, but we don’t always know what this looks like in practice or reality.

In the UMC

The United Methodist Church (UMC) is not immune to being impacted by a gender pay gap. In recent days, our own agency, the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women (GCSRW) commissioned a study on this, resulting in a report that stated “clergywomen, on average, made 13% less than clergymen.”[16] Further, the Baltimore-Washington Conference did a two-year study on “The Impact of Gender and Race on the Lived Experiences of Clergypersons in the Baltimore-Washington Conference of The United Methodist Church,” taking an inward look at their own possible disparities.[17] Even at the 2020/2024 General Conference, Wespath (the UMC’s benefits administrator) was tasked with conducting a pay equity study, which it is currently carrying out. Through all of these efforts and more, we know that the curiosity around a gender pay gap is there.

At the same time, Annual Conferences such as North Alabama have taken great strides to achieve appointment parity for full-time clergywomen.[18] In this context, parity means “bringing the percentage of women among the highest-earning clergy to be equal to the representation in the general pool of clergy under appointment.”[19] While this is just one example, we also know that there is more to the story—we’ve heard from a lot of you. To that end, GCSRW is working diligently to develop a new resource for Annual Conferences to be able to look at their own pay data. Until you have data to ground your conversations, it can be much more challenging to understand where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re headed.

I encourage you to be willing to take a look, be open to possibility, and to remember that this is just the beginning. Systemic change takes time and intention. And let us not forget the theological grounding that brings us into this framing: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.[20]” At GCSRW, we often use this scripture as one of the bases for equal and equitable treatment of women. If we are all one in Christ, shouldn’t we all be treated the same? Shouldn’t our biblical values be interwoven into our ministry in practice? Sometimes, things get complicated—these aren’t always easy problems to solve. And yet, my hope is that we can be brave enough to peek behind the curtain. It’s a start.