FinEquity Tools Workshop: Using Financial Diaries to Analyze the Women's Market

Sex-disaggregated data is essential for product design, monitoring, and to understand the impact of financial inclusion interventions on women's lives. In this FinEquity interactive workshop MicroSave Consulting shared how they applied financial diaries research to their work with women-led micro and small enterprises (WMSEs) in Kenya. Financial diaries are a type of research methodology that collects data about how people manage money and provides insights into this practice.
This research surfaced constraints that women traders in open-air and cross-border markets - two often overlooked groups among WSMEs - faced when accessing and using digital financial services. MicroSave then used this research to collaborate with financial service providers to design more relevant digital financial services for the traders.
Wholesale and retail trade makes up 60% of business in Kenya (approximately 3 million business owners). Of these, approximately 2 million business owners are women traders and about 32% (~650,000) operate from open-air markets. Additionally, around 30 to 40% of Africa’s regional trade is made up of informal and cross-border trade, which provides employment and livelihood opportunities to low-income and low-skilled women in the border districts of Kenya. However, women traders are not monolithic. They comprise different categories and different segments, each with their own unique needs and circumstances. MicroSave will guide us through the steps of their research approach where they analyzed 6,000+ transactions. They will share insights from Kenya, and how they applied the data to enhance the quality of digital financial services for women traders.
We also heard from L-IFT, who have used a financial diaries approach to better understand segments of the women’s market in Myanmar and Rwanda, to develop more relevant products, and to tweak existing products and services.
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Speakers:
Rahul Chatterjee | Senior Manager, MSC’s Data and Insights team
Sonal Jaitly | Senior Manager and Lead, MSC's Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) practice
Anne Marie van Swinderen | Founder and Managing Director, L-IFT BV
Jenny Morgan | Impact Pathways Thematic Lead, FinEquity
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