Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of working with a variety of stakeholders in the mobile technology arena, across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, helping them to address the fact that fewer women than men in developing countries own and use mobile phones. One thing has been clear to me from working with organisations in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Uganda, Jordan and Myanmar – there are very few who think about gender in the right way.

My experience from working with private sector organisations in the mobile industry, for instance, is that women are often considered as an ‘afterthought’; a subject for discussion at a meeting next Thursday; something that they will get around to making a plan for when they have time; something that the CSR department should be addressing, or a segment that they probably should design a bespoke product for. Female customers are often referred to as a ‘segment’, as if they were a homogenous group. And there are many businesses in the mobile industry who still don’t think about women (or men) at all for that matter – they only think about customers along alternative demographic dimensions, such as income or age.

But the above is mistaken, and misses a fundamental business opportunity. Women are half of the population, and therefore half the potential market for the mobile industry. They are not just a ‘segment’ like ‘young technologists’ or ‘homemakers’ (although you of course do have ‘segments’ of women, just as you can have ‘segments’ of men). Instead of being considered as a separate topic, thinking about women should be integral to everything the business does. When strategy and KPIs are set, organisations should ensure they are considering and measuring women as well as men. When market research needs to be done, organisations should make sure that the research is being conducted on women as well as men. When products are designed and tested, female customers should be involved in this process as well as male customers, to make sure that prototypes appeal to them too.

Gender therefore isn’t something that a particular ‘department’ should exclusively look after, but a topic that should cross-cut virtually every department and activity. For this mindset to be changed, strong leadership and strategy needs to be set by the C-suite level to cascade down through the organisation. Company strategy should include a focus on reaching women as well as men, with associated KPIs at every level of the business. Closely related to this is the need for companies to collect and analyse gender-disaggregated data, including data relating to the purchase and use of mobile handsets, SIMs, data, mobile money, apps or other mobile services. If businesses don’t track this sort of data by gender, how will they know if they are reaching half of their potential customer base?

The broader lack of robust data on women in developing countries has recently been highlighted by The Gates Foundation, who have committed USD 80 million to addressing the issue. But many organisations in the mobile industry typically already sit on a wealth of data that has just never been examined with a gender lens. Doing so can enable an understanding of where women are ‘dropping off’ relative to men when it comes to mobile adoption, and the barriers faced by women compared to men, such as a higher price sensitivity, or less confidence and trust in mobile services. Understanding these fundamental insights is crucial to sustainably serving half of the potential customer base.

There is a significant commercial reward for mobile industry players who get this right. For instance, GSMA Connected Women research estimates that closing the gender gap in mobile ownership and usage across low- and middle income countries represents a cumulative revenue opportunity of USD 170 billion for mobile operators over the period 2015-2020. Companies who better understand their female customers will, by definition, have an improved understanding of their male customers as well, enabling them more swiftly to reach scale and stability in their operations overall.