Can we leverage technology in the fight for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment?

7 min readApr 27, 2024

Author: Jacqueline Masssiah-Simeon, SAEDI Consulting (Barbados) Inc.

“New technologies hold the promise of the future, from climate action and better health to more democratic and inclusive societies… Let us use them wisely, for the benefit of all” (Antonia Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, 2021)

Technology, and continuous innovation is here, and it is here to stay. Technology innovation is moving a lot faster than we can keep up. For many, an awareness of all the changes may be lacking. Technology is neither good nor bad; it is the development and use of technology that presents the challenge.

Some research suggests that AI can level the field in the areas of recruitment and pay, for instance.

How effective are these tools in addressing poverty reduction, women’s empowerment of climate change? Are they unbiased? Is there any chance that the use of some of the technological tools available can in fact exacerbate inequalities?

Let’s explore this in more detail, starting with poverty reduction.

Poverty Reduction

In using technology for poverty reduction, one of the key questions considered is how technology can be applied to increase access to social services, and provide opportunities for income generation and financial security, below highlights how technology is being applied for health, education, income generation, food and nutrition security, and financial security.

HEALTH

In Kenya the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) is an organization using simple technology for health care interventions, by using mobile phones the MAMA sends messages to pregnant women, new mothers and families, sharing information on behaviour change for successful childhood health outcomes. In addition, technology is used to connect patients in remote areas with a doctor or team of doctors, for consultations without the expensive cost of travel.

EDUCATION

Access to education is one of the most fundamental responses for poverty reduction. An educated population is better able to make decisions around economic endeavours, sexual and reproductive health, and issues around children’s education, health and wellbeing. Technological interventions in education allows for access to textbooks and other learning materials, online teaching/learning platforms, and interactive learning experiences, providing affordable access to education for underserved and marginalized communities.

LIVELIHOODS AND FOOD & NUTRITION SECURITY

According to the United Nations, most of the people living on less than $1.25 per day rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Technology in agriculture, in the aid of poverty reduction, allows for increased yields by the introduction of biotechnology to develop disease and drought resistant crops, and crops with enhanced nutritional content. Technological approaches that address climate smart agriculture are being used to transform agricultural systems to improve food and nutrition security.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

A key piece of technology in poverty reduction is Digital Finance. M-Pesa, widely used in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Egypt, Afghanistan, and several other countries, is a virtual banking system that facilitates financial transactions via a SIM card and SMS messages. Financial technology, or internet finance, allows people in distant towns, and marginalized communities, who do not have access to a bank account, a secure way of keeping their money, as well as easily transacting business.

Women’s Empowerment

Women’s empowerment can be defined as promoting women’s right to autonomy over their lives and their choices. It also speaks to the right of women to be able to meaningfully participate in leadership and decision-making to influence the social, economic, and political developments that impact their lives. This requires women to be provided with the opportunities and control over resources to engage in processes of social development as they need to and as best suits them.

Financial technology can provide women with the autonomy to determine how they expend their financial resources and the means to control those resources. In addition, mobile money services provide an opportunity for women to conduct business, develop a credit history and use technology to increase their capacity to generate income. Access and control help women step out and away from abusive relationships and environments.

A study in Kenya found that mobile money services were beneficial for women in that it enabled women-headed households to increase their savings and allowed some 185,000 women to leave farming and engage in retail and other business activities. It also helped to reduce extreme poverty among women-headed households by 22% (UNWomen, 2019). Women who were generating and managing their own income, were reported to have more decision-making power in their households.

Moving women’s decision-making power out of the household, and into the global space, can also be facilitated by technology. Information and communication technology provides the space for women’s political empowerment with high impact and low cost. Technology also drove the global impact and call to action of the MeToo Movement where women reclaimed their space and their voices on issues of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.

Meeting the Climate Challenge

It would be remiss of the writer if poverty and women’s empowerment were not also set within the most pressing issue of our time, climate change. Digital technology, when used thoughtfully, can be a powerful tool for poverty reduction, women’s empowerment and inclusion within the activities around mitigation and adaptation.

It is accepted that women and girls are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change; for rural women that impact is heavier. Innovation and digital technology, applied with a gender-responsive approach, can increase rural women’s access to resilience-building mechanisms such a financial and non-financial services such as early warning systems, microinsurance, and credit and savings mechanisms, all tailored to their specific needs. Such an approach would ensure that rural women are better able to prepare and participate in mitigation and adaptation actions, but more importantly, would ensure that women’s economic empowerment, particularly in the context of rural women farmers, is not immediately lost with the impact of a climate disaster such as hurricane, drought or flood. Such an approach would ensure that rural women are better able to prepare and participate in mitigation and adaptation actions, but more importantly, would ensure that women’s economic empowerment, particularly in the context of rural women farmers, is not immediately lost with the impact of a climate disaster such as hurricane, drought of flood.

Mitigation and adaptation can offer opportunities to advance the economic empowerment of women, if women are seen less as victims, and more as agents of knowledge and change, working in such areas as food production and reforestation, who can influence policy and actions in environmental protection.

Good, Bad and Ugly?

For women and girls, the digital revolution represents one of the biggest opportunities and threats to gender equality (UNWomen, 2019).

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reported that while women were using mobile money accounts, it was often only for receiving funds (for instance from Government social programmes) and for making payments. These women were therefore not aware of or using the account to access other financial services such as building credit or accessing loans.

The Smile Foundation posits that AI systems could:

assess candidates based on the resumes without any preconceived notions of gender, and selecting the best candidate for the job,
use analytical tools to fairly assess salary data against performance metrics, helping companies to identify where and when women are being paid less for the same role and performance as men, and
assess promotion rates to identify patterns of gender discrimination.

Is this really true? AI cannot think for itself; it can only draw conclusions based on the datasets on which it has been trained. So, if the data is gathered in a way that means it inherently contains biases, then this will lead to bias in the model as well[3]. The success of Artificial intelligence hinges upon how and for whom humans design, programme and use it.

Conclusions

This writer posits that technology in all its diversity can be used positively for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment if we pay attention to a few key factors:

Gender-Responsive Design: Ensure that technology products and services are designed to take action to reduce inequalities; paying attention to women’s unique needs and preferences, and particularly to cybersafety.
Data Collection and Analysis: Collect sex-disaggregated data for informed policy development; including proving and accounting for a positive impact of technology on women’s lives.
Digital Literacy: Implement comprehensive digital literacy programs paying particular attention to building the skills of women and girls in rural communities.
Access to Affordable Devices and Connectivity: Access to both internet the Internet and affordable devices are is important for women and girls to access resources and participate meaningfully in development.
Education and E-Learning: Information and communication technology allow for greater opportunities to access resources for capacity building.
Entrepreneurship Support: Creating digital platforms for E-commerce, online marketplaces, and business incubators can all boost women-led businesses in terms of income generation, employment generation etc.
Safe Digital Spaces: Digital spaces with must be created with some level of feedback or reporting to keep women and girls free from cyber harassment.

Technology alone, however, is not the answer. Technology and its intended uses must be integrated into broader social, economic, and policy frameworks in order to generate meaningful and sustainable impact. By addressing the above-mentioned actions, we can leverage technology as a powerful tool for positive change.