The Sexual and Racial Discrepancy in Pay -- After Uber: Lyft

While Uber tries to sort out its cultural heritage and pay off complainants. Lyft prefers not to enter that arena and prepares forehand.

Lyft has taken on a third-party auditing company to review its payment system and evaluate if their company complies with acceptable standards of equality. A Lyft spokesperson stated that "As Equal Pay Day approaches, we believe it shouldn't take an additional four months, seven months, or 10 months for someone to earn what their counterparts do in a year just because of gender or race."

Women are 52% of the population, which means that they are the majority. They also make up just under 50% of the US workforce, but the only make 80% of what their male counterparts make, and this is a 20% difference in income due to their sex.

Silicon Valley has been a constant drag on equality and has come under some serious fire due to their lack of diversity in employment as well as the inequality in their payment systems. Even the large companies that are not usually associated with racial bias have decided to check their own systems just t be sure, and thee companies include Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook.

Lyft decided to contract a third party for an unbiased report of how their system operates. This report will define the corporate payment culture as it is and will allow Lyft to view itself in the mirror and make decisions how to change and improve.

Lyft has not been lazy; it has been actively employing the best people for the job while taking into account gender and race as factors in determining the right fit. According to a report that Lyft had made in June 2017, 42% of all employees were women. However, when looking at specific functions, only 36% of the executive team were women and 18% in tech. Most of the employees in Lyft were either white or Asian, while 63% were white, 19% were Asian, 7% Latino and only 6% were black. The higher up you go in the job function ladder, the higher these ratios become in comparison to white employees.

It seems that Lyft continues to drag after Uber, waiting to see what steps or mistakes Uber makes and then acts accordingly. This is a good way to survive, but not a good way to be original. Learning from mistakes is an integral part of success, but why cant Lyft be original?

Naturally, Lyft does not include drivers in this report, since drivers are not employees, they are independent contractors, and 80% are not fully employed in driving or even last over 6 months.

Wake up, its not Uber and Lyft, its the system. Its society, and until we sort out these inequalities, we wil continue to fuel unhappiness.