UN Women Ends Partnership With Uber to Create Jobs

Mar 24, 2015 10:35 AM EDT | Matt Mercuro

The United Nations will no longer partner with Uber to create 1 million jobs for women as drivers by 2020 over pressure from labor union and non-government organizations.

On March 10, Uber issued a blog post to announce it was embarking on a "new global partnership" with UN Women with the goal of improving the economic opportunity for women. The post was released to coincide with the UN gathering being held in New York to celebrate women's rights.

Since the event, there have been no talks between UN Women and the San Francisco-based app service.

"UN Women is grateful for Uber's generous support to this event, and encourage Uber to continue its efforts to promote gender equality," Nanette Braun, a spokeswoman for UN Women said in a statement to Bloomberg. "At this point, we do not plan to expand the collaboration."

Uber has not said how many women drive for Uber in the world, but about 14 percent, or 160,000 of its drivers in the U.S. are female, according to Uber's blog.

The ride-sharing company has dealt with regulatory issues and protests by taxi and limousine drivers worldwide since being founded in 2009.

 A Boston man was accused of assaulting a woman after asking her to pay in cash last year. In January, a driver in Chicago was charged with sexually assaulting an Uber passenger who passed out in his vehicle in January. Later on in the month, a New Delhi driver was accused of raping a woman who fell asleep in his car.

Uber has said it will still try creating 1 million jobs for women as drivers by 2020 and will look to UN Women and similar groups around the world for help to achieve its mission, according to Bloomberg.

Despite all of its hurdles, Uber has grown into one of the world's largest startups the past couple of years. Currently the company is valued at $40 billion, with operations in 54 countries around the globe.

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