Month: September 2023

With a research grant from the WEE-DiFine Initiative, we sought to understand the experience of Nigeria’s female domestic workers. We were particularly interested in exploring the transformative potential of digital financial services (DFS) on women’s economic empowerment (WEE). We used structured interview guides to conduct 40 in-depth interviews with women domestic workers and 27 key informant interviews with employers and recruitment agencies. In this blog post, we present salient findings from our study. Namely, we identified a variety of mechanisms through which DFS, facilitated by mobile phones, enhanced the well-being and empowerment of women domestic workers.

Financial Autonomy Through DFS

The narratives of the female domestic workers interviewed emphasized that mobile phones served as a gateway to accessing DFS and played a pivotal role in transforming the participants’ financial landscapes. The participants reported using their phones for many financial purposes, including receiving bank alerts, sending and receiving account numbers, transferring money to provide financial assistance to family members and acquaintances, and conducting business transactions at point-of-sale terminals.

The participants’ narratives illustrate the ways in which DFS, enabled by mobile phones, can save time and ensure financial security. For example, a 52-year-old participant highlighted the transformative role of a mobile phone in facilitating communication with her daughter and transferring her money without the need for physical travel. The participant stated thus:

“Yes, I have a mobile phone. It has improved my life via putting calls through to my daughter who lives at Ogbomosho instead of going there myself or if I needed to send her money I will transfer money to her. It has really helped me with my job. For example my boss outside will communicate to me through phone if she won’t be around and my boss in the university here will call me to inform me that she won’t be around and also instruct me to do my work well. Mobile phone has really helped me to save my money because I opened a bank account and I can keep my money intact.”

DFS, facilitated by a mobile phone, saved this respondent’s commuting time and stored her money safely in a bank account for use at her discretion. Moreover, for women like this respondent, digital transactions eliminate the need to physically travel with cash, which exposes them to theft and other financial inconveniences.

DFS also enables domestic workers to digitally access their wages, affording them privacy of financial information and personal agency over their resources. This control reduces the risk of manipulation and allows women to make independent financial decisions. For example, a 62-year-old participant emphasized the independence she gained from owning a transaction account:

“Yes, owning an account has made me independent, because if I’m with my husband and he asks if I have money and I says no, he won’t question me and also I don’t have to ask about his due to the reason that the money is in the account. Everyone has their money to their pockets. And it is not all the time I have to be dependent on my husband, if my husband doesn’t give me money, I can get what I need prior to when he comes back or gives me.”

Looking Ahead

Our interviews demonstrated that DFS can help empower female domestic workers in Nigeria through multiple pathways, including saving time, ensuring financial privacy and security, and enabling a woman to enact her own preferences. However, there is ample opportunity to deepen women’s engagement with DFS and further advance their empowerment. Specifically, in our sample DFS usage remains low for some women, and only a few women indicated that they have made investment decisions within their households. It is important to explore the drivers behind women’s lack of engagement in these domains. This matter is particularly pressing in the context of Nigeria’s domestic work industry, which is still fragmented and unregulated, leaving women vulnerable to widespread violation of their rights. In our forthcoming working paper, we plan to discuss these themes and identify priority areas for future research.

References

[1] Osiki, A., Sadiq, H., Osiki, P., & Oniga, V. (2023). COVID-19 pandemic, a war to win: assessing its impact on the domestic work sector in Nigeria. Labour and Industry, 33(2), 241-262. :

[2] International Labour Organisation (ILO). (2021). Making decent work a reality for domestic workers: Progress and prospects ten years after the adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189).

Authors

Okechukwu Amah, Lagos Business School, Pan Atlantic University

Ruqayyah Baderinwa, Lagos Business School, Pan Atlantic University

Muhammad A. Akanji, Lagos Business School, Pan Atlantic University

Victor Kolo, Institute for Work & Family Integration

Charles Aigbona, Institute for Work & Family Integration

Chinedu Okoro, Lagos Business School, Pan Atlantic University

This study aims to identify factors that influence women’s adoption of digital savings products, as well as ways in which those products may impact women’s savings and economic empowerment. Our study targets low-to-middle-income married women in Delhi. However, our attempts to conduct a survey involving direct questions about participants’ spending and savings proved difficult, as respondents were hesitant to share personal financial information. Asking direct questions about financial matters in a survey format can be perceived as intrusive. This realization led us back to the drawing board to reconsider how to capture women’s financial decision-making in a less invasive manner.

In response, we pivoted to a novel qualitative approach. Specifically, we used photovoice, a participatory research method using photographs. This approach illuminated women’s perspectives on financial decision-making and the role of digital finance in their lives. Creative qualitative methods can unveil aspects of participants’ financial lives that may be difficult to articulate in verbal interviews, such as nuanced contexts, details, and emotions. In this blog post, we summarize our key findings from the photovoice component of the study and detail the effectiveness of photovoice as a qualitative research method.

Pivoting Toward Participatory Research Methods

Recruiting women for our study proved to be a complex task. Low-to-middle-income women in India are often reluctant to openly discuss financial matters, especially in a research setting. Therefore, building trust and establishing rapport was essential to create an environment where participants were comfortable sharing their experiences.  To achieve this, we approached potential participants through trusted community members and ensured their anonymity. Ultimately, we successfully recruited a diverse group of women.

Field adjustments: Respondents who did not have a personal smartphone sketched their significant purchases in the photovoice exercise.

To delve deeper into our respondents’ perspectives, we utilized photovoice in addition to in-depth interviews. Photovoice¹ is a participatory research method that empowers individuals to share their stories through photographs. We asked participants to use their phones to capture a picture of a significant purchase they had made or wanted to make. This approach enabled us to bypass direct questioning and allowed the participants to express themselves visually and personally. We ensured that our data collection team was trained to probe effectively, as we wanted the follow-up questions to depend largely on the photos shared with us. Photovoice provided a unique platform for our participants to reflect on their financial decisions and share insights that might otherwise remain unspoken.

Women Share Their Stories Through Images

Through the photovoice exercise, we discovered the motivations behind women’s purchases and observed patterns in their decision-making processes. While some participants showed (via image) luxury items or home renovations, most highlighted that their spending choices are influenced by their children’s needs and aspirations, such as educational expenses or weddings. Additionally, most participants indicated that their spouses and sometimes other family members play an active role in their decision-making and that they seek mutual agreement before making decisions.

Importantly, we also identified disparities in household decision-making power based on traditional gender roles. Disagreements between couples were common, especially with regard to larger financial purchases such as a new house. Participants emphasized the importance of communication and revisiting topics with their partners until a consensus was reached. However, many participants felt that men still held more authority regarding financial matters, which often led them to ultimately accept their partners’ decisions or make sacrifices to avoid conflict.

Although we simply asked participants to share an image of a significant purchase they had made, many voluntarily contextualized their photos and divulged the hidden stories behind them. These details allowed us to better understand their decision-making. Additionally, this context provided important insights into how intra-couple communication can affect joint decision-making.

Participatory research methods like photovoice offer key benefits over quantitative methods. We found that participants were more responsive and willing to share their experiences when prompted by personal photos rather than by quantitative survey questions, which generated limited responses. While a quantitative approach would have allowed us to determine what specific purchases were prioritized by our participants, photovoice allowed us to understand the dynamics and motivations behind their financial decisions. We discovered that most participants prioritized purchases based on a sense of duty toward their children; these purchases ranged from educational expenses to simply purchasing sweets and treats for enjoyment. While the final decision-making authority for household decisions still commonly rested with  men, female participants emphasized joint decision-making to the extent that it avoided conflict in the household.

Looking Ahead

The benefits of photovoice were evident in this context, where a lack of trust was observed, and financial information was sensitive. Despite challenges in recruitment and cultural norms surrounding financial discussions, we uncovered complex gender dynamics in our sample. The use of photovoice generated valuable insights into how women navigate intra-couple financial decision-making. It is evident that while women are actively involved in household decision-making, power imbalances and gender roles can impact their agency and ability to assert their own preferences. Future research and interventions should focus on addressing these gender disparities and promoting open dialogue by creating safe and inclusive spaces where women feel comfortable expressing their financial goals, concerns, and aspirations.

References

[1] Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health education & behavior: the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education, 24(3), 369–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019819702400309

Authors

Kaavya Arakoni, Associate at Busara Center for Behavioral Economics
Ritika Divekar, Analyst at Busara Center for Behavioral Economics
Jaspreet Singh, Senior Associate at Busara Center for Behavioral Economics

Throughout history, humanity has grappled with a myriad of risks—from natural disasters like floods and droughts to the spectre of illnesses and mortality. These risks not only bring immediate suffering but also have long-lasting consequences, particularly for the vulnerable segments of society.

Farmers, for example, lose more than just the crop directly destroyed by a natural disaster. Once a farmer’s crop is ruined by a disaster, say a drought, the fear of future losses can discourage them from investing in their farm in subsequent years, resulting in decreased future productivity and income even without a disaster.

But what if their crops were insured?

With insurance, farmers can not only minimize their losses from a natural disaster but also have the confidence to continue investing so that productivity does not fall in the future. They can even confidently invest in new technologies that entail greater risks but have the potential to further increase productivity and income. Thus, insurance creates what economists call a “resilience dividend”; it enables people to take calculated risks to pursue opportunities that can help them break the cycle of poverty.

However, accessing insurance has traditionally been an uphill battle for the poor and marginalized. For receiving financial services like loans and insurances, an individual must be creditworthy in the eyes of the service providers. This is where they struggle the most. To begin with, typically their income is small and irregular, limiting their ability to make payments, and their assets are insufficient as collateral. Moreover, they primarily rely on cash transactions, which are challenging for a financial service provider to track and consider in the assessment, further limiting their creditworthiness. Consequently, their access to essential financial services, including insurance, is severely limited. Without insurance, poor and marginalized people, who also do not have a sufficient financial buffer or safety net to fall back on, suffer the most when a disaster strikes.

Rural poor are at a greater risk due to climate change because of their nature of livelihoods, e.g., agriculture. But generally, rural poor in developing countries have few options to protect their livelihoods from risks. Technology, particularly digital financial services (DFS), has the strong potential to change that.

In his keynote speech for BIGD’s international conference—Making Digital Finance Work for Women, which was held in June 2023—Dr Michael Carter, an economist at the University of California, Davis, discussed the possibilities and challenges of utilizing DFS to enable rural communities, particularly rural women, to better manage risks and secure their livelihoods. This article is based on Dr Carter’s presentation.

DFS has brought many essential financial services to remote and rural areas where they were not feasible before due to the high administrative costs of transactions in the traditional financial system. Dr Carter pointed out that just the access to DFS enhances the resilience of vulnerable people against unforeseen events. He gave an example of a woman in a remote Kenyan village who purchased crop insurance; the purchase was made possible by mobile money. Verified mobile money accounts of insurance clients like her also ensure that any payout can be made instantly, without error, and at a lower administrative cost.

Technology is not only transforming the ways transactions take place but also introducing new financial products that can better support the needs of the poor and marginalized people. The insurance the Kenyan woman bought was of a new type involving a loss-verified or an index insurance contract, in which payouts depend on the loss determined by satellite information and remote sensing observations. Moreover, digital transactions are trackable by design, which can help improve the creditworthiness of rural, poor, and other marginal groups who use them. The efficiencies and accuracies brought by these DFS innovations make it more feasible to offer much-needed insurance services to these vulnerable people.

Insurance products can help a variety of population groups manage risks, but women’s role in the family introduces an important dimension to this need. Women’s work in most developing countries is predominantly home-based, both economic and care work. Thus, one may assume that their livelihoods are less likely to be directly impacted by external risks. Paradoxically, relative to men, insurances for managing external risks have a more profound impact on women, and, more importantly, the long-term prospect of their families.

In traditional households, husbands are typically responsible for earning, while wives manage vital household functions like education, healthcare, and feeding. When husbands’ income decreases, the budget for these functions also declines, but it does not increase when incomes rise. This means that women primarily bear the downside risks in household contracts, despite their critical role in maintaining family well-being.

This skewed arrangement has serious consequences. An uninsured external risk can severely affect children’s education and nutrition, impacting the family’s human capital development. However, when women have access to risk management tools like crop or livestock insurance, the entire family benefits in the long term. Empowered by insurance, women can make important investments in their children’s nutrition, education, and well-being.

However, women tend to have narrower digital footprints because of their limited physical and financial mobilities, making them less trackable and consequently diminishing their creditworthiness to DFS providers. Service providers must take these constraints into account in designing inclusive digital financial products, for example, by coming up with gender-based client assessment criteria.

Women’s limited physical mobility also restricts their social networks. Consequently, they are also less informed about insurance products. Their weaker economic position restricts their capacity to pay for them. The adoption of innovative models like the Village Insurance and Savings Account (VISA) can prove instrumental in empowering women; developed in Nepal, VISA imparts financial literacy to rural communities, diminishes transaction costs through demand bundling, and leverages social mechanisms to foster savings and facilitate loan repayment.

Similar initiatives should be taken to address the barriers faced by different marginal groups in accessing DFS. Only then is it possible to fully leverage the power of technology to bridge the existing gaps in access to finance and to make financial services available to those who need them the most.

Investing in helping women access insurance is not just a financial decision. Women’s critical role in their households’ human capital development makes it a strategic investment and a step towards building a prosperous and equitable future, especially in the face of climate change.