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Striving and Surviving reveals that for most BoP [base of the pyramid] women, the main priority in life is simple survival. Better housing, family healthcare and a more stable income were also among the greatest priorities. If the mobile industry provides practical and affordable solutions to address these priorities, they are likely to find a receptive audience who stand to gain much from mobile ownership.

This report also identifies unique social, cultural and economic factors within each country which shape women’s needs and their attitude towards mobile ownership; the mobile industry will need to understand these factors if they are to develop services that will reach most BoP women. For example, in Uganda four out of five non-mobile users would be interested in owning a mobile, but in Southern India, this figure is less than 6%, due to factors such as cost or the disapproval of husbands. Only by understanding specific social attitudes and market factors will the mobile industry successfully realise the market potential of BoP women.

Such information will be revealed in greater depth in a series of reports that GSMA mWomen will release throughout 2012, examining each country in further detail, as well as focusing on specific needs such as health and education.

For now, Striving and Surviving aims to provide an overview which shines a light on BoP women’s lives, exploring the serious challenges they face, as well as their hopes and aspirations for the future. The report looks into the social and economic context in which they live, their priorities in life, their current mobile technology use, and how mobile operators and the international development community may help them to benefit from mobile in the future.
 

“I will ensure that my kids get proper education. They will be able to get jobs, have better money. They will not suffer.” Woman, rural North India

“Before I had a mobile phone it was very difficult to know what was happening with my relatives in the village… my husband could only give me permission twice a year to visit them… now I feel closer to them since I can talk to them…” Woman, Uganda

Above are the voices of just two of the more than 2,500 women who took part in Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid, GSMA mWomen’s new research report exploring the lives of women at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP), those living on less than two US dollars a day. Portraits is a brief version of that report, designed to be as accessible and information-rich as possible.

The mobile industry – and indeed much of the world – knows little about the lives, struggles and aspirations of women at the BoP. Yet these women represent one of the largest opportunities for new users for the mobile industry, while also being the most likely to see real and substantial
improvements in their lives through mobile services which could, for example, provide crucial healthcare information or give them the tools to set up businesses to move out of poverty.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof argues that “in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.” In this paper, we present a design model for empowering low income women in the developing world, in ways that cut across individual application areas. Specifically, this model characterizes a possible trajectory for NGOs and women to engage with each other and among themselves – potentially augmented by technology – to help women escape from poverty.

The fieldwork components in this study took place over 15 weeks in three phases, with a total of 47 NGO staff members and 35 socio-economically challenged women in rural and urban India. Interviews and co-design sessions with seven proof-of-concept prototypes showed that women appeared to belong to five distinct stages of “growth” in striving towards independence. We report the technology design lessons from our co-design sessions to illustrate how user readiness, relationship building at the community and family levels, and integration with state, national and international level programs, should be taken into account in the broader context of intervention design.