Photo by Dominic Chavez (IFC)

Caroline Rubin, Julia Hakspiel and Bobbi Gray from the WEE Working Group spoke with Alexa Roscoe, Disruptive Technology Lead at IFC’s Gender and Economic Inclusion Group, and Lana Graf, Principal Industry Specialist for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at IFC about ways in which digital technologies can support the women’s economic empowerment.

How do digital technologies remove barriers for women’s participation in the economy?

Alexa: Disruptive technologies can remove barriers for women’s economic participation—such as helping women access new or better forms of work or ensuring women entrepreneurs can access and compete with the same tools as men. As we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is moving online so these tools are increasingly essential to ensure women can thrive as the founders, leaders, or employees of future businesses.

And unfortunately, this comes with a caveat — that women need to be able to access technology on an equal basis with men, which is by no means guaranteed. The connectivity gap is well documented — globally men are 20% more likely to be online and 50% more likely in least developed countries. The World Bank’s Findex data shows that women’s financial inclusion has plateaued even though Fintech continues to thrive, so there is definitely an access challenge there.

How can development practitioners use tech as a practical tool for promoting women’s economic empowerment?

Alexa: First, we need to understand gender gaps related to digital inclusion—in terms of privacy, connectivity, affordability, and digital skills. Planning around that is essential to ensure women can access and leverage FinTech and other disruptive technologies. For instance, we saw with one client that a new, more sophisticated tool had a lower approval rate from women as this market preferred more straightforward approaches.

Second, we need to address the gender gaps to digital inclusion head on and acknowledge the opportunity that addressing these gaps presents. For example, in Nigeria, IFC worked with fast-moving consumer goods company Daraju to understand men and women-owned businesses. We found that only 16% of their female distributors used computers to run their businesses, versus 22% of their male distributors. But female distributors accounted for 20% more in transactions and 16% more in profit as sales agents. If Daraju could help them close the digital gap, the female agents could contribute even more to the company’s bottom line.

Can digital technologies reduce bias and discrimination? Or do they foster it?

Alexa: There is ample evidence that without dedicated effort, racial, gender, and other biases are reflected or amplified in emerging disruptive technologies. Disruptive technology is only as good as its designer and its purpose. Globally, we are seeing a move towards more intentional design and use of technology, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data to address gender gaps and other types of bias.

Lana: We have a portfolio company in Nigeria, Trade Depot, that has a digital marketing platform capturing supplier and retailer information. Using AI and machine learning the company has been able to analyze a lot of transactional data from the retailers, such as previous loans they have accessed and the number of monthly transactions. The data clearly show that there are more women owners among the retailers.

Transactional data are a very powerful tool. It’s an unbiased tool and can act as additional proof for insurance companies and financial services providers to offer working capital or loans to female retailers. Without these data, many women retailers wouldn’t be able to access finance—now we can use these data to prove their financial history. Through machine learning we can also automate the loan disbursement, while ensuring that evaluation is done in an unbiased way and constant improvements as more data become available.

What about artificial intelligence (AI)? What role can it play especially in terms of women’s employment?

Lana: AI can help us remove gender bias from the hiring process and address gender pay gaps. One of the ways is to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, where candidates and employer are matched based on skillset, years of experience in certain capacity, and number of accomplished projects. In this case, gender and other factors won’t be considered when the list of the best candidates is formed for further HR processes. But AI cannot change everything – it cannot address behavioral change or cultural and social norms. We promote AI assistance in Human Resources with some of the companies in our portfolio. Revelo operates in Brazil and in the US for international hires. The challenge the company has in emerging markets is quality of applicants. Although Revelo can find good candidates, they are still missing some key skills and qualifications. Revelo offers training to upskill the candidates to match the requirements of potential employers and make them more attractive and a better fit. Lack of good quality digital skills is a well-known problem that Revelo is solving, it’s quite a big deal.

Such tools can help match women and men with jobs in an equal manner, but how those women are treated in the workplace will depend on the culture of the workplace and the individual managers.

What do you view as the largest economic opportunities for women in the digital economy?

Alexa: For the technology sector there are three key opportunities. First, getting more women into STEM careers, hiring, and retaining them. Second, funding women entrepreneurs in the tech ecosystem is critical. For instance, a recent IFC report on women in accelerators found that female founders are less likely to benefit from funding when participating in an accelerator. And third, an opportunity that has been least addressed to date - designing and implementing products and business models that serve women – there is a huge potential here.

Most technology companies have at least heard the message about the need to hire and retain women. But fewer take the next step of asking “Who are our customers? How would this technology impact women and men differently?” That’s where we need to go next. IFC has been working with several ride-hailing applications to better serve women. Our analysis found that women and men prefer different products, ride at different times, note different benefits, and there is also significant difference in the number of women and men riders. This knowledge is key in tapping in women’s market and unleash its potential.