Meet Stella, from rural Tanzania

Stella is a 35-year-old widow and mother of four children. She and her three youngest children live together in a one-room, mud-brick house in rural Tanzania. Her village has power, but it is unreliable, with service only a few hours a day and often not every day.

Since she needed to help her family in the fields as a child, she was unable to attend school herself, and as a result cannot read or write in any language. She speaks the local language Swahili, and understands a bit of English.

Stella supports her family by working with a community women’s group that produces handicrafts for sale via a local non-governmental organization or NGO. Stella earns enough money that she is able to share with her son and sister who have both migrated to the capital, Dar es Salaam.

Both Stella and two of her children are HIV positive.

The Mobile Opportunity

Stella has never used a mobile phone, but is aware of their value in making phone calls. Personally, she misses her son and sister in Dar es Salaam, and would like to be able to stay in touch about the health and safety of these family members.

Stella currently provides cash to her son and sister when they visit the village. She isn’t aware that mobile operators in her area have recently introduced mobile money services, which could allow Stella to send money to her family in the capital.

Every few months, Stella and her children need to visit a health clinic to learn the results of their latest HIV tests, and to collect treatment to manage their HIV infections. The journey requires a two-hour-long walk to a bus that travels to the clinic. They often arrive at the clinic to learn that their test results or medicines are unavailable, or that they are late for their treatments. With a mobile phone, Stella could receive by phone her test results and reminders to come to the clinic when treatment is available.

Mobile as a testament to human ingenuity

It’s possible to use a mobile phone, despite the inability to read or write; millions across the world do every day, including some resource-poor women. They take advantage of the ‘proximate literacy’ of their family and friends and many teach themselves through trial and error. For example, 47% of married base of the pyramid (BoP) women that we spoke to in our recent study ‘Striving & Surviving’ [link] said they have been taught how to use the phones by their husbands. And 30% of the study participants indicated that they learned how to use the phones themselves. The ability of people under such constraints to use a tool designed for users with greater resources at their disposal is testimony to both human ingenuity and the great value the tool adds to their daily lives.

Now, Stella is not a real human being, but a fictional, composite ‘portrait’ based on the thousands of real BoP women we have spoken in the course of our recent research. And this research clearly demonstrates that despite the benefits, some women, like those Stella is drawn from, are still discouraged from owning and using mobile phones. Of those women we spoke to in ‘Striving & Surviving’ who didn’t own a mobile phone, 22% said it was because they ‘wouldn’t know how to use it.’ Even of those that own mobile phones, many don’t realise the full range of benefits a mobile phone can bring beyond voice calls or SMS and only 2% surveyed have reported using mobile internet.

The GSMA mWomen Programme aims to promote improved mobile ownership and usage by resource-poor women in emerging markets by 2014. We aim to bring precisely those kinds of life-enhancing mobile services that Stella currently lacks, such as health information, mobile money and increased ability to connect with family and friends, into the hands of women across the developing world.

Phones getting smarter

The phones described in our study were feature phones, the most common in developing markets, with basic voice and SMS capabilities. These feature phones were originally designed to meet the needs of those that could afford them: urban, literate males with incomes that could support the costs of the device, and its continued use, including airtime top-up and battery charging.

Over time, however, the standard feature phone will face competition from the richer experience available on smartphones. The price of smartphone devices is dropping and usage of smartphones is increasing across the world. Smartphones are now available for as little as US$80 in Kenya and other countries, and these prices continue to drop. Strategy Analytics project that smartphones will gain in share at a rapid pace in emerging markets. In India, it projects that the pace will increase by 856% between 2011 and 2016, and by 239% in Indonesia over the same period.

And people across the developing world will find ways to use smartphones to meet their needs, whatever their resource and skill levels. Given that women make up the majority of the world’s poor, illiterate and unempowered, they are unlikely to be the first adopters of these technologies. But the devices will eventually become the standard, particularly given the upswell of second-hand mobile devices entering these markets. And the women currently underserved by mobile risk falling further behind.

Here at the GSMA mWomen Programme we’re asking, what if smartphones were designed to meet the needs of low-literacy women? What if the tools were geared towards serving the needs of those with limited disposable incomes and access to power? What if we could improve the smartphone user experience now to prevent resource-poor women, like Stella, from continuing to miss out in the future?

Women & mobile: the smart choice

According to OECD, women direct up to 90% of their income to their families and communities. So everyone would benefit from more women being able to own and use mobile technology as it develops – everyone including men. Not only as users of the phones with varying levels of literacy, income and access to power themselves, but also as members of the families and communities that women play such a crucial role in supporting.

Soon, we’ll be sharing more about what we are doing to promote more user friendly smartphone designs and how the mobile and design communities can get involved to ensure resource poor women are included in the next stage of the mobile revolution. If you’ll be at the Social Good Summit in New York City on Sunday, 23 September 2012, look out for us there. Otherwise, stay tuned, and we’ll be back next week with news to share!