Resource-poor people in the developing world face a number of challenges when it comes to managing their finances: incomes are low, irregular and unpredictable and formal financial tools hard to access. Women in particular face an additional burden as they often have primary responsibility for managing the household budget. For example, male focus group participants in our Striving & Surviving study found that their wives were the ‘finance ministers’ within the family. Due to broad-based gender disparities in these countries, women execute this role with even less access than their male counterparts to income-generating opportunities and money management tools.

Therefore, to better understand how mobile financial services could meet women’s needs for safe, convenient financial management tools, the GSMA mWomen Programme has partnered with Visa Inc. and Bankable Frontier Associates to conduct research in Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania. It will be launched at Mobile World Congress 2013. In the meantime, you can learn more about the challenges women face in managing their money and how the research aims to clarify the opportunity for mobile operators, financial institutions and others seeking to deploy mobile financial services.

Read more here.