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Did you know that in 2022, only 63% of women were using the internet, compared to 69% of men (ITU)? If women are unable to access the internet, they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces, which diminishes their opportunities to grow their careers. To address this gender gap, this year’s theme for International Women’s Day (March 8, 2023) is “DigitalALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”.
TaroWorks celebrates and supports women who are championing the advancement of technology and digital spaces. We take pride in the fact that 80% of our own TaroWorks staff members are women. To celebrate the day, take a look at just a few of the projects TaroWorks and our partners are working on to enhance women’s empowerment through technology.
For more than 7 years, Sistema.bio, an organization that manufactures, installs, and services biodigesters to transform animal manure into biogas for clean cooking and organic fertilizer, has worked closely with TaroWorks. Sistema.bio uses TaroWorks to enhance the flow of data to support business operations and help remote field agents conduct their field activities on their mobile devices. This allows their field technicians to access the latest information from their central databases, review payment history, and record their visits to their customers.
Since the majority of Sistema.bio’s promoters and technicians in the field are female, the use of this offline CRM helps to promote gender equality. Learn more about the TaroWorks and Sistema.bio collaboration, and hear from women technicians in the field.
Village Enterprise, an organization working to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship and innovation, uses technology and data to drive poverty alleviation and support women’s empowerment. Village Enterprise is a proponent and implementer of the poverty graduation program. Their one-year poverty Graduation Program combines microenterprise development through training, a seed capital investment, and mentoring with a self-sustaining savings program to create lasting change in the communities where they work.
Village Enterprise field staff use TaroWorks, combined with Salesforce, to target participants, register cohorts of business entrepreneurs, monitor program implementation, and track outcomes over time. See how this tool is helping combat poverty and empowering women through technology.
ZanaAfrica Foundation and The Population Council are working in Southeastern Kenya to test whether menstrual hygiene (access to sanitary pads) and reproductive health education helps keep girls in school and improves social and health outcomes.
To support this project, TaroWorks field services app was used to stage a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the efficacy of reproductive health education and menstrual hygiene products by managing the distribution of sanitary pads to over 5,000 adolescent girls in 140 primary schools in Kenya. Learn more about how this project supports gender equality and how this project is empowering women through technology.
Clean energy, like off-grid solar, is one of the many innovative solutions to help combat extreme poverty. Because of this, there is an increased need for more production and a broader distribution of energy in the developing world. To help support this, organizations like Solar Sister, Ilumexico, and Proyecto Mirador use mobile and cloud computing to enhance base of pyramid sales – which in turn, helps impoverished women.
Evidence shows that the income of self-employed, rural women who have access to energy is over twice that of their counterparts without access to energy. For rural women, access to energy is correlated with 59% higher wages.
Solar Sister Impact Report, 2016
These organizations face many day-to-day challenges selling solar products and clean cookstoves to rural communities in Africa, Mexico, and Ecuador. Each organization is using TaroWorks to manage data collection, base of the pyramid sales, and field operations. See how base of pyramid sales are empowering women through technology.
The Uthabiti works to build resilience through market-led livelihoods opportunities. This project is a consortium between six organizations including the Grameen Foundation (Uganda), Save the Children, the Response Innovation Lab, Swisscontact, PHB Development (PHB), and Mandulis Energy. The project is aimed at enabling financial and marketing systems for refugees and host communities – particularly women and youth doing off-farm activities. In doing so, Uthabiti addresses critical gaps in the target value chains that limit economic activity, particularly reliable and cost-effective sources of clean energy and access to finance.
TaroWorks supports the Grameen Foundation in the project by linking participants to financial services, assessing product innovation and quality of services. TaroWorks supports women and youth refugees/host communities operating sustainable mobile money micro-businesses and helps to track the sales of clean energy products.
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TaroWorks, a Grameen Foundation company.
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