To continue celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD)Uber has launched GigSister, a community-based initiative to empower women drivers and delivery people on Uber in Nairobi. The platform which was created by Women at Uber, is intended to connect, grow, and empower a community of women drivers and couriers on the platform through an array of initiatives.
The launch of GigSister follows a similar initiative launched in Nigeria through a collaboration between Uber and Healthtracka ,a digital health platform that makes lab testing easy and convenient to provide self-sampling cervical cancer tests for women drivers on the platform.
As part of the GigSister initiative, Uber has teamed up with Google to host a series of #iamRemarkable training for women earners. The training is designed to equip the earners with leadership tools they can use to position themselves for success in running their businesses. With the gender gap in ICT in Africa being at 23%, the African Union strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment aims to enable women and girls to become more active users and influencers of the technological space. The aim is for women to unlock greater gender enabling e-solutions for funding.
This is the motivation behind Uber launching the GigSister initiative, to ensure that they are bridging this gap for women earners on the platform. Speaking at the event, Uber’s Head of Communications East, and West Africa Lorraine Onduru commented,
“We are so happy and proud to launch this initiative to help eliminate barriers for women in the gig economy. We want to support women, provide them with a platform to network, and make them feel empowered to get into the tech space, and make a living out of it.”
Dorothy Ooko Head of Communications & Public Affairs, Africa at Google added, “We are pleased to partner with Uber to roll out the #IAmRemarkable training which will help more women celebrate their achievements in the workplace and thrive in their businesses in the tech space. We believe this is a step in the right direction to ensure that women are equally equipped with the information, support and opportunities they need. Uber joins over 1000 companies that have implemented #IAmRemarkable in their organisations to empower the women drivers and couriers and drive allyship.”
The program, which has already achieved success in parts of Europe and the UK, sees Uber teaming up with like-minded partners, including Google and L’Oreal, to uplift and empower women through mental health support, motivation and self-promotion, as well as self-defence training.