In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, a dedicated group of operators, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and donors came together in Manila for the GSMA mWomen Working Group from November 19 to 21st.  This event, co-hosted by Smart and Grameen, was a unique gathering designed to facilitate a candid discussion around how to better serve women through mobile services and to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that exist when designing and delivering mWomen offerings to resource-poor women.  There is an incredible opportunity in the Asia Pacific region to serve women better through innovative mobile services.  In particular, using non-traditional partnerships between operators and NGOs to reach women was a consistent theme throughout the event.

Among the many stand-out mWomen partnerships discussed at the event, two projects illustrate some of the key challenges faced in the region as well as highlight the impact that well-designed mobile services can offer to resource-poor women.

Market Entry of the Ooredoo Group into Myanmar

The first is the market entry of the Ooredoo Group into Myanmar.  As one of the only countries left in the world with staggeringly low mobile penetration rates of 7% and internet penetration of just above 1%, the social, economic, and political implications of introducing mobile technology into the country is exceptional. Globally, 21% fewer women than men own mobile phones.  However, because so few people in Myanmar own phones, there is no persistent mobile gender gap in the country today.  So the question is, in a country where less than 6% of officials in elected office are women [1] and persistent gender discrimination exists, can enlightened operators target women effectively and integrate them into their sales and distribution channel to prevent a mobile gender gap from emerging?

This question has profound implications for how we address the mobile gender gap from an industry, regulatory, and international development perspective.  From an operator perspective, Ooredoo is certainly committed to integrating women into their core value proposition in Myanmar. During the Clinton Global Initiative this past year, Ooredoo and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women announced a program that aims to enable 30,000 women to become entrepreneurs by selling prepaid Ooredoo airtime in Myanmar by 2016 [2]. Integrating women into the retail chain has network effects that include attracting and retaining more female customers while also empowering them through employment.

Sari Software in the Philippines

Another fascinating organization that attended the Working Group in Manila was Sari Software.  A home grown social enterprise from the Philippines that designed a software platform with the aspiration to help the ~800,000 female small store owners in the country run their businesses better. These Sari-Sari stores represent approximately 30-40% of the country’s total retail sales. Though the organization is still in the early stages, their user-centric design approach led their product through over 30 iterations and resulted in their pilot users requiring over 3.5 hours to move through 7 steps in the initial design to an average of 5 minutes to move through 12 steps in the final iteration of the application.  Their partner, Hapinoy, who works directly with networks of Sari-Sari store owners, is helping them to design, test, and scale their offering.

Sari Software in the Philippines and Ooredoo in Myanmar represent two opposite ends of the spectrum when serving resource-poor women in the Asia Pacific region.  In Myanmar, women have little to no access to even basic feature phones and technical literacy barriers are high.  In the Philippines, Sari Software is tapping into the emerging transition to smart phones to create applications that offer real value for women at the base of the pyramid.  As we look forward to the future of mWomen programs around the world, these two projects will no doubt contribute to the conversation around how operators and value-added service providers can work together with NGOs to serve women better.

For more information on the GSMA mWomen Working Group click here.