This episode is a deep dive into the realities of digital financial services for women. Savita Bailur and Hélène Smertnik work at Caribou Digital, a research and advisory firm that helps its clients build inclusive and ethical digital economies. Both have worked intensively on understanding how women around the world are experiencing the shift to digital finance. They share the importance of building trust and control into digital financial services, and the small changes to product features that can do so. We also dig into women's experiences of online work, and the opportunities as well as the huge challenges digital platforms offer women. Find out more about Caribou Digital: cariboudigital.net
Find out more about Caribou Digital: cariboudigital.net
And you can read more on these topics and others from Savita, Hélène, and their colleagues in Caribou's blog.
Time-stamped show notes:
01:05 About Caribou
02:45 User research: shifting our focus from the technology and bringing it back to the end user
04:09 What do digital financial services (DFS) have to offer women? (Clue: it's not so much about the digital)
08:32 And what is getting in their way of accessing digital financial services?
15:21 Why trust and control are so important for women
19:57 Financial literacy and the role of cash
21:55 When money becomes mobile and the tricky issue of registering your own SIM
25:55 The companies and organizations proactively taking on the challenges women face
29:33 The impact of COVID-19 on use of digital financial services
32:37 Is online work better work? The benefits and complications of digital platform work for women
37:42 Hélène and Savita help us define a feminist future for digital financial services
Alice Merry (00:04):
Welcome to the podcast that takes a feminist look at the world of money. My name is Alice Merry, and this is the feminist finance podcast. This episode is a real deep dive into the realities of digital financial services for women. Today I'm speaking with Savita Bailur and Hélène Smertnik, from Caribou Digital. Caribou is a research and advisory firm that helps its clients build inclusive and ethical digital economies. And both Savita and Hélène have worked intensively on understanding how women experience the shift to digital finance. And they're bringing all their experience from carrying out user research around the world to this episode today. Hi Savita. Hi Hélène. Welcome To the feminist finance podcast, great to have you here today. Savita, I'm going to start by asking you to introduce yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and also a little bit about Caribou?
Savita Bailur (01:05):
Yeah. Thanks Alice, and It's a great honor to be involved in the podcast because I think we both believe this is a critical issue. So I have been a research director at Caribou Digital for the past five years. We are an ethical digital economy consultancy working in emerging markets, and our clients include organizations, including the Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Omidyar, Oxfam, Standard Chartered, UNICEF, UN Women, just the whole gamut, really, of those working in development. And increasingly both Hélène and I have been working on gender and minority groups and their challenges and opportunities for inclusion in a digital world. And that of course includes finance. And in personal terms, I was an academic before this, I was at LSE. I still teach part time at Columbia, SIPA, school of international political affairs, but really try to ask all the questions around ethics, justice and all these from a gender perspective and now even more critical in the digital context. So, yeah, that's my background and really just proud to be working on all these issues which are so apparent everywhere these days.
Alice Merry (02:28):
Wow. And these are all exactly the kind of issues we want to pick your brain on today. So really happy to have you here. Hélène you also work with Caribou as a Senior User Researcher. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and what exactly is user research?
Hélène Smertnik (02:45):
Sure. Thank you very much Alice. So indeed, I work with Caribou Digital, for the last two years doing user research, mostly, lucky for me, with Savita. So what is user research? To be honest, I actually looked for a definition to be very, very specific, but then decided to just use my own words. User research is, my experience of it is, is field research that focuses on the end user. So in the case of what we're looking at today, which is digital financial services, instead of looking at the product and get excited about the technology around DFS, we may rather focus on how the product is being used by the end user, be it women or men, and what are the positive and negative experiences that users have when it comes to digital financial services. So it's really kind of shifting your focus from the technology and bringing it back to the end user. That's how I understand user research, and Caribou Digital, very much promotes this, let's say bottom up approach in research.
Alice Merry (04:09):
It's going to be really interesting to learn from some of the stories that you've seen through that research. I wanted to focus us in the beginning on digital financial services. I know that that's a topic that Caribou Digital looks into a lot, and these have been touted as an alternative, as a way of including people who are excluded from traditional banking services. Could you give us some examples from some of the markets that you've been working in?
Savita Bailur (04:40):
Yeah. I'm happy to talk about that just as an overview and then Hélène has got amazing stories from field work. So, digital financial services, I think, is a little bit of a distraction, a term which distracts, because it sounds very advanced. But when you think about it, I think the majority of DFS, which is used by women still tends to be cash in cash out or mobile money, so digital money, rather than loans or anything more sophisticated. And there are lots of reasons for that and we can go into it. But I think using that as a term immediately sets up the problematic, which is that lots of women are not that interested in the digital aspect of it, but they're more interested in the financial aspect of it. How do they get access to money? How can it be easy for them? And it's great if digital does that, but it's also not always a given, is it their mobile phone that the DFS is accessible from? Do they have opportunity to something as simple as recharge their phone?
Savita Bailur (05:54):
Becky Faith wrote a great paper actually based in Brighton in the UK, on homeless women and how one of their major challenges was actually just getting charging points for their phones, which you would never think of. But I think the crucial point here is that digital is not the kind of be all and end all, and it's not... We have to think of the infrastructure and the foundations beneath digital. And that foundation is also still in very patriarchal, very institutional roots. So we have to address those first, otherwise it's just replicated in DFS. And we can talk about all the examples that we've got. But it really goes back to the World Development Report on the internet on how analog foundations really have to support the digital commerce. Helen. I don't know if you'd want to add anything there.
Hélène Smertnik (06:54):
No, I think, I really like how you put it Savita. I think our experience on the field is indeed that, even in Kenya, where I currently live and where we've done a lot of research and where mobile money is highly penetrated across both higher income and lower income populations, certainly isn't the end goal. Cash is still very much a thing, including in Kenya and in particular for women. So I think it's a good lens to think about how do you focus on financial services that are relevant to the needs of women and how effectively the digital aspect makes it easier to access and not less easy, especially given that in vulnerable communities, women often are those that are less digitally savvy and as a result more at risk of not being able to access and use these types of services.
Hélène Smertnik (07:59):
We saw for instance, in Ivory Coast, Côte d'Ivoire, where mobile money is relatively mature, not as much as Kenya, but still at a certain level of maturity and where the digital financial services offering was quite limited and vulnerable communities would go back to cash, inevitably. I think we're going to start looking together around what are the barriers, but I think that the premise is right to think about it in that line.
Alice Merry (08:32):
Yeah, I think it is very important to remember that this point that you've emphasized and that Savita's emphasized that digital isn't the point per se, it's the access to financial services that really matters. I wonder if we could dig into this a bit more and talk about the barriers that you see women facing in the countries where you're working, in terms of access to finance, I suppose both in terms of analog, in terms of cash, and in terms of digital services. Hélène, maybe there's some examples or some barriers you could mention from where you've been working.
Hélène Smertnik (09:07):
Sure, definitely. Thank you. And I'll start with one perhaps very obvious one, which not only our research, but also literature speak to quite a bit, when it comes to women and their usage of financial services, including digital ones, is the need for trust and confidence when it comes to financial services. So probably the biggest barrier I see in our field research has been lack of trust and confidence. I think it's key to keep that in mind.
Savita Bailur (09:45):
Yeah. 100% agree. And just in terms of what we've been working on recently, we've been working on these "level one principles" developed by Gates Foundation and in partnership with MNOs around the world, there are around 30 principles there. And our role in the project was really to understand the impact of those principles on women. And it was fascinating, because they were principles from interoperability to notifications to real time transfers and access to agents, everything from just interface design to how these technical principles would be implemented and how they fit in with the agent network interaction. And in many cases, we felt that some of them applied much more to women than men and so needed much more attention. They needed to be addressed with the gender lens, with a feminist lens, which we thought was really interesting.
Alice Merry (10:42):
So these are principles that have been developed. These are principles for developing inclusive digital financial services?
Savita Bailur (10:50):
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Alice Merry (10:52):
So did you find that these actually needed to be changed to apply to women?
Savita Bailur (10:57):
Yes. Okay, there was one, I think that we really needed to think about it a lot more, and it's a tricky one. So it's on... We find it even hard to say the word, but irrevocability. So, basically the idea behind irrevocability is that if you make a mistake, when you're paying someone, you are able to reverse that transaction. And that makes absolute sense because, reversing transactions is where mobile money operators lose a lot of money. But the problem is that a lot of the women, and Hélène can speak more on this, but a lot of the women that we spoke to in Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire, were nervous that if they made a mistake, it would be a problem. They wouldn't be able to get their money back. And in some cases it was true. It was quite a headache for them. They have to go to the bigger agency office rather than the agent. And it was a stressful situation in some cases.
Savita Bailur (12:02):
But on the other hand, a lot of the trades people and those who were using mobile money didn't trust that aspect of the fact that a transaction, the payment could be reversed. And Hélène spoke to merchandisers who said, "look, you know, someone can buy something and then leave and then reverse that payment and say that they didn't actually make it." So we felt that women were being affected more, both as potentially as merchants, female merchants where these transactions were being reversed afterwards, but also as fearful users, because they were worried that it would be hard to get their money back. So in both cases, I think it affected women differently or at least women were more aware of it, and talked about it more. I don't know if that's fair Hélène?
Hélène Smertnik (12:50):
No, no, Absolutely. I think, with that kind of million dollar question of how do you create trust? There are different DFS features that do bring more confidence and some are more complex than others. Irrevocability is definitely one of the more complex ones. And I think how you described it is exactly on point. What's interesting is when there are some that are more technical and some that are a bit more straightforward, and both really matter. But to go back to some of the ones Savita has mentioned earlier, and break those down a bit more, in terms of the more simple features that seem to impact women most compared to men were, for instance, receiving a notification in real time.
Hélène Smertnik (13:47):
So just to put it in context, when you make a mobile money payment, is essentially once you've done it, you receive an SMS that confirms that this is the amount you've sent or you've received, and you also receive your balance.Women seem to be much more attached to receiving that notification that would confirm that essentially the money isn't hanging somewhere very abstract. I think going back to why women still rely on cash as we were talking about at the beginning, is because mobile money in the end is quite abstract. Then when we speak about vulnerable communities that may be more used to using cash and be used to saving money, maybe at home, for instance, it's harder to work with abstract money, not everybody's as used to using credit cards.
Hélène Smertnik (14:40):
So small things like a notification that arrives on time, makes a huge amount of difference. If your notification arrives three hours later, during those three hours, that woman may not be able to do anything. She may not think that she's actually received the money and imagine that she's waiting at a bus stop. She may have the money, but she's not receiving notification, and so she won't be able to take the bus until she knows that she has the money and she can therefore ask for the bus driver to take her on board. So, that's one thing that's a very simple feature that we've seen impact women more.
Alice Merry (15:21):
Now, I wanted to pick up a bit more on this point, because it's come up a few times in the conversation. You've mentioned how this kind of notification is so important and this whole problem of creating trust and confidence with women in financial services. And it's really interesting to me because it's come up a few times in the podcast. I think it was in episode two, we spoke to a Fintech founder in Mexico, and she was bringing up some of the same issues. And one of the phrases she used with me was that women are skeptical, women are skeptics about technology and for good reason. And I just wanted to dig into that a little bit more. Why do you think that this issue of trust is so much more important for women than perhaps for male users, what's going on there?
Hélène Smertnik (16:15):
I think part of, and maybe a bit of a simple answer, but is that women often, at least in the sample of the respondents we spoken with, have usually less money to work with. So I don't know whether they are skeptical or more cautious, and it may be a synonym in a way. But effectively the fact that they have less money means that every cent counts more. And so you are more cautious. It was said by a lot of respondents, women and men, that men usually when they spend money, they spend bigger amounts. And when they save, they also save bigger amounts. When they take a loan, they take bigger credits, whereas women are much smaller. So as a result, it reflects in their way of using their money in a digital fashion. Again, there's also this the abstract way, the fact that they may not be fully either literate or at least not digitally literate, which makes them even more cautious, given that, initially already they're pretty cautious of the money they're using. Savita, what do you think?
Savita Bailur (17:29):
Yeah. I think the flip side of trust is control. And I think for a lot of women, it is absolutely about being able to control the finances, because it is a sense of identity, it's a sense of agency. In fact, Hélène, I was thinking, we used it for our children research, but I was thinking that acronym we used about the "APP economy": Agency, Privacy and Portability. I think it's just as relevant for women and DFS because, I think all those impact on the challenges, but also the opportunities, the impact on the promise that it holds, that DFS holds for women, but also why they approach it with caution and skepticism, because: Access - you want to make sure you have access to your phone all the time, to your mobile money account all the time; Agency - you want to be the one who makes decisions; Privacy - one of the big, big concerns around DFS is, who's going to see these notifications? What if I don't have control over them?
Savita Bailur (18:31):
There's even a lot of research being done on savings groups right now, and trying to take savings groups online or make them digital. And there was a report recently that, Okash, one of the DFS providers in Nigeria, threatens to send everybody on your contact list on your phone, an email if you fall behind or a message if you fall behind with your repayments. And so, the whole idea of a savings group is that it's supportive. It's a small community, not everybody... I mean, there is a group sense of responsibility and incentives, but it's a controlled group. It's people who you know and trust and presumably they're in the same situation and so on.
Savita Bailur (19:11):
But the fact that if a savings group goes digital, you don't really know who's going to find out that you need to save or even if you're borrowing. So all those things, I think they just... And portability as well, right? Money is so portable and you can carry it with you everywhere. And one of the things that really emerged in the demonetization drive in India, and I think it was 2017, so many women just lost access to their cash. They had stored rupee notes in rice jars and things like that. And they were suddenly worthless. But they still had them there because they knew where they were and they had control over them.
Savita Bailur (19:57):
So, yeah, this idea of... And just one last point, I think it's really interesting. I've been following the FinEquity discussion on literacy and numeracy and what does that mean for DFS. And one of the points made was that the challenge with digital literacy and digital numeracy is that, when you're talking about money, it's actually tangible, a lot of, especially women who are not schooled... Someone made the interesting point, try a test where you ask somebody abstract numbers and, let's say you minus a certain amount or add a certain amount, and try the same thing by giving them notes and see how different it is. And there's something tangible about notes because you're used to working with them. So I think that whole aspect, just as Hélène said, digital is abstract, is something we really, really need to be aware of. And luckily we're in the position of researchers rather than product implementers and saying, "you must make everything digital." But that's why we are... Let's not leave anybody behind by ignoring all these behavioral norms, cultural norms, psychological interactions, and so on. Sorry, that was a bit of a long point.
Alice Merry (21:08):
No. Its perfect.
Savita Bailur (21:10):
But yeah, all this is so important. Let's not jump to technology immediately.
Alice Merry (21:15):
It is so important. And you mentioned, I thought it was so interesting though, the point that you brought out about privacy and control, especially given that research shows that women are less likely, not only less likely to have access to a mobile phone, but if they have access to a mobile phone, it's less likely to be their own personal mobile phone in many countries. And I wonder, Hélène, whether you see this in some of the countries you've worked in, are women less likely to have access to their own mobile phone? And then if they do, how does that impact on these, if you're using a family phone and you get a notification about your money use, presumably you might be thinking of, well, who else in my family will see this?
Hélène Smertnik (22:02):
Yeah. So, it does, as you mentioned, it does depend from country to country. The experience I've had has been less of a community phone or a household phone, but rather the phone may well be theirs, but the SIM card may be registered under somebody else's national ID number. And effectively it comes back, the result is the same when it comes to a mobile money. When you start using your phone as your financial wallet, if the home SIM is registered under somebody else's name, effectively all money that you put in it, even if it's yours and you've earned it, it will be under the name of someone else. And it does happen quite often, that women are on that situation where either they got the phone quite early. And so maybe their father was the one to... Sorry, I shouldn't say quite early, they got the phone before they were at the age of getting their national ID, so the SIM was registered under their father or their mother or a sibling. But once they may not have changed that, and then all of a sudden they start using it as a wallet, tensions can arise then, not always apparent initially.
Hélène Smertnik (23:28):
And then in many conversations we've had, we asked the questions and it only seemed to appear to women, then. Some don't seem to worry, some seem to think that, it's the money I use, and I just take my husband's ID. And in some cases very much this sense of, I like to use the word secrecy versus privacy, but a sense of being able to separate out what my husband has and what I have. And in that case, they would need to change and register with the SIM under their own name. That is quite common. Women in Kenya have a lot of... ID coverage in Kenya is quite high, but even in Kenya, women will have their SIM registered under their husband's or their brother's, sibling's ID.
Savita Bailur (24:20):
Yeah. I think that registration point again is overlooked, because it's easy to think that you have access over your device, but it could just be under actually somebody else's. And I think, again, other examples, so in Bangladesh, it's quite common for the male head of the household to register SIMs. And one person can register up to 10 SIMs in their name. So that's often come up both in literature and in our findings in terms of women who get jobs through online platforms. This was both in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and of course, Hélène can speak more to it. But just to go off topic a little bit, what's the role of platform agencies in checking that it's actually the woman who's getting paid, if she gives a number? Is everything going to go to the husband or somebody who's in more power? And then that person decides whether the woman gets the money or not? So, just the broader questions, who is checking all these things, or are we just reinforcing existing binaries?
Hélène Smertnik (25:31):
No, absolutely. That actually... Sorry, but just on top of that, it reminds me of in Kenya of a company that does cash transfers, and that similarly had to convince women to re-register their SIMs under their names in order to get cash transfers directly under their own [crosstalk 00:25:52].
Savita Bailur (25:52):
Oh, that's good.
Hélène Smertnik (25:53):
Yeah.[crosstalk 00:25:55].
Alice Merry (25:55):
Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's, interesting. So it seems that some companies are taking active steps and are addressing this and are seeing some of the challenges that women face specifically. Do you think it's certain companies that are more likely to be aware of women's challenges or more likely to implement features that really work for women?
Savita Bailur (26:22):
I think that's difficult to say. Yeah, it's difficult to say, because I imagine that the organization Hélène's speaking of came from a humanitarian perspective, right?
Hélène Smertnik (26:33):
That's right.
Savita Bailur (26:34):
Yeah. So I think that would have been more about a normative decision: "Hey, this is important. We need to make sure it's women who get paid. There's a ethical sense there." It's harder to imagine a bank or DFS provider doing that. If they did it, I think it would be more from, "Oh, this is a new market, and an underserved market, we need to focus on." So, I think all organizations have different approaches, but ideally it would be good to look at a combination of both, because the private sector brings in a lot of the drivers of sustainability and making things work, because if they don't work, they're not going to make a profit, but NGOs and humanitarian organizations bring in the perspective of we need to do this because it's the right thing to do. So I think combining both, so we get sustainable design and products that will be used is really important.
Hélène Smertnik (27:30):
It makes me think, they are a few mobile network operators who also do try to reach women more specifically. It may not need be by with digital financial services in particular. But one recent example I came across in India was Vodafone who has a new feature that is called Sakhi, I'm not sure, so maybe, Savita you're aware of it, and what it does is it... You haven't heard of it? I think it came up in 2019 and the feature was to have emergency alerts. So really not much to do with digital financial services, but for women to feel comfortable using their phones in public, they could connect with their peers and their families through a direct emergency alert for free. And they also had a private number to recharge airtime. And that touches a bit back to our points on privacy and secrecy. Women don't necessarily like having to use their own mobile phone number when doing a transaction. Imagine having to give a male agent your phone number in order to receive money into your account, sometimes that could be sensitive in certain contexts. And this feature from Vodafone, Sakhi, has enabled women to use a private number instead, to do recharges.
Hélène Smertnik (29:10):
So there are all sorts of features, I don't think we know of one specific company that does it better than others, but I do think that both that humanitarian, or at least a socially driven approach, and commercial approach really compliment each other quite well.
Alice Merry (29:33):
Yeah. These are really, really interesting examples. And I'm curious to pick your brains a little bit about, how any of this might be changing in reaction to the COVID-19 situation? I think there's been a lot of talk that COVID-19 is accelerating the move towards digital financial services. And I also wonder about how it might be changing, not only accelerating, but changing the trajectory that it's on?
Savita Bailur (29:59):
So, COVID has definitely had a massive impact on every aspect of financial services. The Economist did a really good piece, just recently, on COVID and the impact on mobile money and mobile money uptake. I think also MNOs were very aware of it, and they were quite, in the beginning, I think they were also a little bit worried that they may lose business because people may not go to agents. So one of the things that M-Pesa did pretty quickly in Kenya, was to lift fees for certain amounts. I don't know the exact detail, but I think the idea was that they wanted to foster and encourage existing customers, but also make sure that new customers felt safe. I think it does have a huge impact, but I also think there are, again, challenges because, again, one of the things that we found in our research was that tech and touch, or even tech, touch and trust are equally important.
Savita Bailur (30:57):
And if women don't have access to agents or if they feel that agents are not safe because female customers are exposed, so the agent doesn't wear a mask, or if they have, they don't have sanitizer, things like that. I think there may be some fear of going to agents. So that's also important. So, Caribou and MicroSave consulting have been working on COVID-related research and a part of it is on impact on female customers. But I do think it will be a huge issue. And then ironically, just from the other side, we talk so much about developing countries, which is completely understandable, but I'm right now based in the US and I think mobile money here is completely underdeveloped compared to, let's say Kenya, and, okay, there may be Venmo or PayPal, which is neither of those are mobile only, but if you're trying to pay somebody, who's an informal worker, gig worker, it's practically impossible to do it if they don't have access to a bank account, if they don't have a PayPal account or a Venmo account. I mean the, the infrastructure is just not set up.
Savita Bailur (32:14):
So what I mean is, I think COVID will propel countries all around the world to think differently, but again, hopefully not leaving people behind, because there are plenty of people, let's say in the US or the UK or other people, and also older generations and so on... rethinking how mobile money is designed and implemented. So, yeah, it's going to be a big sea change. I think.
Alice Merry (32:37):
I want to pick up on another piece work that I've seen that Caribou Digital has done, about women's involvement in e-commerce and online businesses. I saw some research that you'd done in Sri Lanka, and there's a video with one lady who runs an e-commerce business in Sri Lanka called Sarah. And something from that video really, really stuck out to me. She said something along the lines of that in her opinion, online work is better work. And I'm just curious as lots of people during this pandemic are looking at online work and looking at e-commerce and seeing if there's opportunities for them there, in what ways is e-commerce better work for women?
Hélène Smertnik (33:25):
Oh, that's a wonderful question to ask, as Savita and I spent a lot of time trying to identify what was better work. Was it more formal work? Was it better paid work? And maybe even more. It turns out that, I think that definition varies from country to country. And so this research, we did both in Sri Lanka and in Bangladesh, and the results were quite different in both countries. In the case of Sarah, the reason why she thought online work or working as an e-commerce entrepreneur was better, was because it gave her the flexibility to stay at home, not have to do door to door sales with the potential complications and security risks that that would entail for her as a young, very pretty woman, in Colombo suburbs.
Hélène Smertnik (34:30):
And, so I think that's why she thought it was better work. In addition to that, she was learning with a friend how to start leveraging social media to increase her sales, and all this quite self-taught with the support of a friend. So she had the feeling that, compared to a job that she was doing before, which was a clerk job in a small company, she was able to do much more and the interesting thing is the revenue may not be the same. I think at this point she was still making ends meet, but she certainly felt much more satisfied by the flexibility it provided her and that feeling of empowerment, if I may use that word, that it gave her and a feeling of accomplishment.
Hélène Smertnik (35:31):
On the other hand, if I may compare it to another example, other women preferred domestic work in Sri Lanka. And the reasons for that were actually because there was less commitment, because it was less formal, because they would get money in cash. So it's interesting, this concept of better work, and what it means for one individual. But certainly online platforms have seemed to provide a very interesting opportunity for women, young women that want to develop an idea and have a project in mind, such as Sarah, who was selling hair products, very, very nice hair oils. On the other hand online work also has a challenge for women, in particular for mothers. And I think that shouldn't be forgotten. I think I had completely disregarded the counter side, which is, especially if you're a woman and you are working from home, you may be expected to continue doing your normal household chores, in addition to the work you're doing.
Hélène Smertnik (36:52):
So there is, as often is the case, a bit of double side to the coin when it comes to online work, and there is literature that speaks to that particular challenge for women that have to, because they work from home effectively, still have to have their household responsibilities. And it has proven to be a strong barrier for women to access to working online.
Alice Merry (37:19):
And I guess something that's been thrust into the spotlight a bit recently as so many more people who used to work on site or in offices are being forced to work from home and, I guess, maybe a broader part of the world population is starting to see those challenges.
Hélène Smertnik (37:37):
That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Indeed.
Alice Merry (37:42):
I wanted to finish by asking you a question that we've been asking everybody who comes on thepodcast, which is to help us in defining what a feminist financial system would look like? So I'd love to hear your take.
Hélène Smertnik (37:56):
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to hear yours as well, frankly. To be perfectly honest, when I started doing research on digital financial services for women, I wasn't fully convinced myself that changing a feature could have an impact on women. And my very, I have to say it, Western view was, my example was immediately to saying, did Visa ever do a study to see if women felt comfortable using credit cards the same way that men did? So I had a bit of that skepticism. And then I did get it, as I did the research, and, hopefully as we presented a bit during this podcast and this conversation, changing features to make sure - to go back to this big point of, to make sure that women have trust and have confidence in these financial services that are digital and therefore much more abstract than the concrete cash that they may be used to, in particular for vulnerable communities.
Hélène Smertnik (39:11):
Changing these features to create that confidence do have an impact and do have a much stronger impact on women, which as a result may lead them to start using financial services and therefore become more financially independent. So I've become quite a strong believer actually on the fact that there is a way of ensuring that the needs of women are reflected in the products and services that are in the digital financial space and to make sure that, as a result, they become financially included.
Savita Bailur (39:52):
An ideal future will be one where we are not discussing injustice, because there will be no reason to discuss it or positive affirmation in terms of saying, "Oh, we need to focus on women more because women will already be mainstream." So I think there are three points that on what ideal feminist financial future looks like. One is that, all the decisions and all the kinds of behaviors that we see with women in terms of DFS, because I do think, despite all our cautions against moving too quickly towards DFS and the importance of cash and so on. I still, I do think DFS will be the future one way or the other, that our only concern is that we don't leave anybody behind when we move towards that.
Savita Bailur (40:40):
So when we're talking about the DFS feminist future, I think it's really important that we don't talk about, or rather we pay more attention to behavioral norms, to culture, and women are free to make financial decisions without being steeped in those norms. So we've understood them. We've taken them into account, but women are empowered beyond them, so they're not grounded in them. And I think some countries are already doing this much better than others. The freedom that women have online and in finance is really impressive. I also think women should have equal knowledge and freedom to participate in a financial future without dependence on anyone else. So right now a lot of it is about either not having avenues, not having ability, and if you go back to our, that "APP economy", which we called it kind of glibly, but, the agency, access, privacy, portability. If you take all those four features, just making sure that women have equal access, equal agency, equal privacy, et cetera, portability. So I think that would be a fantastic financial future for women. Not feeling threatened and not feeling like they have to operate in secrecy or privacy, or to their benefit, not because they're afraid of other people having access to their money really.
Savita Bailur (42:08):
And then finally, I think the importance of women in designing these features. How many women are part of MNOs, both design or DFS, rather design, but also management, policy, in government positions, of ministries, of telecommunications? Just the whole infrastructure going from the mobile money agent right up to a ministerial position or a management position in a DFS company. So we talk about diversity by design, but it's also diversity by management, by intention and so on. So I think that's really important.
Alice Merry (42:57):
It's easy to talk about the opportunities and challenges of digital in general terms. But what I loved about speaking with Savita and Hélène, is the rich research they've carried out into women's actual experiences in various countries and with various different services and features. As Hélène said, small changes and features can make a huge difference in how inclusive the service is. I thought that Savita and Hélène made it very clear: most women, most people, in fact, aren't interested in the digital, they're interested in the finance, and being able to access money in a way that works for them.
Alice Merry (43:34):
And I was particularly struck by the importance for women of control. Savita spoke about how control over money isn't just a practical issue. It's also closely tied to women's sense of identity and their sense of agency. And we saw that again in the popularity of e-commerce amongst some women, as both an economic opportunity, but also an opportunity for flexibility, for agency, and for new sense of identity. Thanks for joining, and a big thanks to Savita and Hélène for sharing their joint insights and their depth of experience. Please do share this episode with a friend or a colleague, and feel free to write with your thoughts or experiences to feministfinancepodcast@gmail.com. See you next time.