Earlier this year, rural women producers, entrepreneurs and leaders came together online to share experiences, and inspire each other in a virtual dialogue organized by IIED with the Forest and Farm Facility. Two trailblazing cooperatives showcased how they are successfully using digital technology to enhance processes within their cooperatives in their efforts to advance gender equality.

It is difficult to change a national culture or to change gender set ups in the home. But it is possible to help women entrepreneurially, bring in money and showcase their capability nationally. This helps overturn gender stereotypes and discrimination. Women inspiring other women to develop their business capabilities then leads to changes in the home and nationally.

Amongst others, digital technologies have the capacity to make a difference in several key business areas including financial planning, record keeping, accessing new markets and building networks. In the second in a series of online Gender Dialogues, hosted by IIED, women from around the world came together to discuss their experiences of digital technology and to hear inspiring testmonies from women-run cooperatives which have successfully introduced digital innovations, transforming their livelihoods.

QR codes in Viet Nam

In Viet Nam, high levels of food poisoning and food-borne illnesses have led to consumers being increasingly concerned about food safety, particularly vegetables. As a result, there has been an increased demand for ‘safe vegetables’, the official term used by the Vietnamese government to indicate that vegetables are certified as VietGAP safe.

With the help of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, Tu Nhien Cooperative – a women-run cooperative in the northwest highlands of Viet Nam supported by the Forest and Farm Facility – has developed a digital system to track and trace the provenance of their vegetables, including H’mong mustard, tomatoes and cabbages. The cooperative farms 7.5 hectares of land and is made up of 35 households.

Using a digital diary app on their smartphone, the women can enter information about their vegetable crop production including the farmer’s name, the crop, and pesticide applications and planting/harvest dates, which are needed to comply with VietGAP certification. The vegetables are then labelled with QR codes which allow consumers to see the provenance of the product using a standard smartphone. 

Previously, all this information was captured by hand. The digital diaries and QR codes reduce the time the women need to record this important information, helping them to balance their multiple responsibilities such as childcare, household duties and income generating work. By improving their supply-chain monitoring, the digital system has also allowed the cooperative to better meet market demands and sell their produce to large and high-end supermarkets such as AEON Vietnam, Big C and other modern outlets in Hanoi and elsewhere. This has led to an increase in income for the women. 

Digital transformation in India

In India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has been on a digital transformation journey over the past decade. A much larger organisation numbering 2.5 million women, one of the first digital improvements they introduced was a digitised membership management system. As well as making it easier to enrol new members and renew existing memberships, rather than manually doing this on paper, the digital system assigns a unique 14-digit membership number to each SEWA member. This makes it easier to keep track of training or other assistance members have received and monitor the subsequent impact on a member or her household. 

SEWA has also introduced a digital savings app, called mBachat. The app maintains records of savings and monthly deposits, reducing the time and effort required to administer their savings and credit groups. 

Another digital innovation is SEWA’s mobile business app, called RUDI Sandesha Vyavhar. The aim of the app is to improve logistics management and marketing of SEWA owned RUDI (Rural Urban Distribution Initiative) branded products which include a range of groceries, spices and other household goods. The idea was to make it easier to order products and keep track of stock. First launched in 2013, the app has gone through multiple iterations and upgrades. As a result of its use, the sale of RUDI products has increased significantly. Thanks to the app, the women now also have richer information about their sales which they use for planning, advance procurement and inventory management at the district and central levels. 

More recently, SEWA has launched SEWA Bazaar – a digital social enterprise. It is an online portal to enable around 100,000 SEWA members to sell their artisanal handmade products – including clothing, homeware, paper products and foods – to a wider market. By bringing all the enterpreneurs together under one brand, the women can access larger markets, better understand market demands and preferences, and be more aware of what other SEWA members in the network are producing. The initial creation of the platform itself was outsourced but developed in close collaboration with SEWA. It is now maintained by a core team of SEWA women who have been trained in digital marketing and content creation, including cataloguing, photographing their products, and spotlighting individual artisan’s stories. The aim is to raise the turnover to 2 million rupees, which will be one-and-a-half times greater than the current level. 

These inspiring examples from Viet Nam and India show how powerful digital technology can be at empowering women and helping them achieve their economic potential. Gender equality is one of Forest and Farm Facility’s core cross-cutting themes, and FFF continues to support forest and farm producer organizations around the world to take positive action on this important area.