Gender Matters: Six Principles for Designing Savings for Women in Rural India
What we learned from a collaboration with Mann Deshi Bank in Maharashtra, India
Gender may be a social construct — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a real-world impact. The social roles and cultural expectations tied up with gender can affect how we move through the world, particularly when it comes to finances.
This was highlighted in a recent project Last Mile Money completed with Mann Deshi Bank, a co-operative bank focused on driving financial inclusion for rural women in India. In December 2021, we partnered with Mann Deshi to design a woman-centred digital banking service for their customers and banking agents in Maharashtra, India. Our goal was to understand the relationship these women had with their finances and how to use digital technology to better assist agents in their relationships with customers.
As a designer on the project team, I spent time interviewing twenty women who were Maan Deshi customers and agents, testing and exploring digital banking solutions with their feedback. One of these women, Sarika, ran a small popcorn and chips business with her husband in Mhaswad. After a skills and marketing training program from Mann Deshi and a loan, Sarika was able to grow the business, sell at a higher margin and put up food stalls in her city. Today, she dreams of growing the business even more and opening up a factory, and uses Mann Deshi tools to help her protect her savings. Thoughts about how to save more money and pave the way for a better future for her children are always top of mind.
As Sarika and the other women shared their stories, several themes emerged — pride in contributing to family finances, the importance of tracking goals, the need for privacy, and more — and we began to develop design principles to respond to these levers.
In this article, we’ll share six principles we learned about designing for women and savings in rural India, including some design provocations and features that could be powerful in helping women achieve their dreams. Not solely gleaned from this project, many of these designs and principles are supported and informed by other projects we’ve done in the savings space. We hope to expand these principles as we uncover more learnings with upcoming projects in designing for women in the last mile money space.
For further reading and additional insights on the financial gender gap, we also recommend the wonderful report Women & Money: Insights and a Path to Close the Gender Gap from IDEO.org and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
1. “Savings give me pride and peace. They are my own contribution to my family’s financial future.”
Many of the women we spoke with were constantly thinking about their family’s well being. Whether they contributed to household finances or not, these women are always planning and budgeting for household expenses, oftentimes building ways to set funds aside for emergencies. Most savings aren’t for personal use but rather for securing their family’s future — extra cash for the house, the children, the business, or preparedness for a family emergency.
Most importantly, the women we spoke to communicated a sense of pride and empowerment in being a contributor to the family’s finances or managing finances, playing a key — but often hidden — role in saving up for collective goals.
“We women don’t live for ourselves, we live for others.”—Sangeeta, ASHA worker, tailor, and an agent with Mann Deshi Bank
Design principle: Visualise her contributions and amplify her empowerment
It’s important to recognise and highlight women’s financial contributions, celebrating the small and big wins over time. Here are some ways to do that:
- Show her how each deposit ladders up to her overall contribution
- Celebrate her small wins by providing celebratory messages at each transaction
- Provide personal accounts and personalised messaging, formalising the idea of “her savings, her contribution”
- Create better storytelling by documenting her progress and helping her learn from success stories of other women in her community.
2. “I save to spend — and at the same time, save to not spend.”
While many of the women aren’t versed in complex financial terms, they understand savings in the context of the goals it needs to meet — an item for the house, a future expense for their family, or a dream they were working towards. The women we interviewed were also adept at planning for household expenses, and shared that they often kept money locked away as a safety net: money that was too easily accessible would be spent now rather than saved for the future.
“Most women I work with don’t understand banking, but they understand their upcoming needs and their future.” — Pravina, banking agent with Mann Deshi Bank
Design principle: Make her abstract goals tangible
Helping women label their money can build motivation and accountability in regards to savings over time. Here are some design elements we explored:
- Create tools to learn about her goals and understand her money mindsets, and use that as a way to introduce your savings product. Examples: Goal capture sheets and guided prompts.
- Give her ways to customise her savings plan as per her goals — splitting savings across different sub-accounts/pots for her different goals
- Help her stay motivated by tracking progress on her goals along the way
- Provide her with goal-based incentives that encourage good savings behavior, helping her reach her goals sooner. Examples: Discounts on products she is saving towards, savings match, increased interest rates, and more.
3. “I like to keep my savings private — sometimes even from my family.”
We learned that some women save without their family’s knowledge — often asking agents to come for collections when no one else is at home. Sometimes this is to keep money away from the hands of an alcoholic husband who may misuse the funds or an easy spender in the family, sometimes for their own safety and at times just to present back a surprise lumpsum to their husbands at the end of the savings plan or when an emergency arises.
“My friend gave me the idea to keep a secret stash. My husband doesn’t know about it.” — Savita, snack stall proprietor
Design principle: Design for privacy and protection
Protect women’s privacy and safety by giving her options to keep her finances hidden. Build experiences with an awareness of what is public, private, and personal for her:
- Offer multiple channels for financial communication that play at different degrees of privacy. Examples: Use printed receipts that can be stashed away somewhere safe; provide on-demand weblinks (through QR codes for example), and Interactive Voice Responses (IVRs) numbers instead of text messages, so she can access information when she has the phone to herself.
- Create moments for agents to spend time learning about the context of her family and how she would like to work with her finances.
- Make personal financial reports password protected (bear in mind that passwords should be simplified for better engagement like a passcode or fingerprint access) and provide quick view toggles for account balances to balance security with access to information.
4. “If I don’t know how to earn, how would I know how to save?”
Many rural women are still new to the workspace and hence new to financial literacy. Money management may be a novel concept for those who haven’t had the income or the independence to make financial decisions. While it is important to build savings literacy, it is equally important to sustainably empower them by providing opportunities and skills to work, earn, and grow their income.
“Earlier I didn’t know about savings, but it was also because I didn’t know how to earn. To start my clothes business, I had taken out a loan and through its repayment, I learned how to save.” — Rekha, tailor
Design principle: Create opportunities for sustained financial empowerment
Empower women by weaving skill-building, business management, and financial literacy into their financial journey. Some ways to get started:
- Integrate financial and business skill building as a part of your product offering. Examples: Highlight work opportunities in the area, provide “how-to” materials, financial term educational modules, and more.
- Provide non-monetary incentives that offer skills and tools to earn money, such as free sewing classes with every sign-up, opportunities to speak with a business advisor, and more.
- Build a community for these women to guide and support each other as they move through their journeys within economic empowerment.
- Combine your credit product with an element of savings, to encourage better financial behaviours and grow independence.
5. “I like plans that accommodate my unpredictable cash flow and unplanned needs.”
Women seek comfort and flexibility to work with their unpredictable cash flows. With uncertain incomes, women would save only the money that was left over after necessary expenses were covered. They looked for financial products that gave them flexibility and didn’t reprimand them if they failed to deposit as per schedule. When it came to pulling money out, liquidity was a key selling point to prepare for potential emergencies.
“It is easier for me to save Rs.50-Rs.100 a day rather than Rs.500 a month.” — Sulochana, farmer
Design principle: Give her customised savings plans that balance her aspirations with her reality
Goals are great, but financial products need to meet the reality of rural women’s lives. Design for flexibility and support across multiple touchpoints:
- Create onboarding moments that allow her to set her savings plan based on a careful reflection of her current finances (what is possible to save) and her goals (how much would she like to save).
- Let her customise her deposit schedules and preferred saving amounts as per what is right for her.
- Provide options for bite-sized and daily savings that take the pressure off her for collecting large amounts of money.
- Offer her products that provide easy liquidity but balance withdrawal moments with nudges for reconsideration and thoughtful decision-making.
- Design to communicate empathy, understanding, and support for moments of financial trouble.
- Provide guidance to help her get back on track after a delayed deposit or withdrawal from her savings.
6. “Digital is no longer foreign to me, but I need guidance.”
Accelerated by the pandemic, digital has become more commonplace in rural environments. While the gender divide is still relevant, more and more women are getting used to owning a phone or having a phone in the household. While their usage is limited by lack of digital literacy and confidence, many women are ready to explore and use digital with the right kind of learning and guidance.
“We teach them in groups of 10–25 women on how to use the ATM. They are often scared of operating it. But only by doing it can you reduce their fears.” — Digital Didi, Mann Deshi Bank digital training agent
Design principle: Balance high tech with high touch
Bring women online — at their own speed. As you build financial products and services for rural women, make sure you build programs and education to help them grow confidence every step of the way. Some ideas on how to do that:
- Parallelly create a digital onboarding program that focuses on building familiarity with digital apps (Whatsapp, Youtube, etc) and bringing her up to speed with new financial tools (ATMs and PoS machines, online payments, digital wallets, etc.).
- Women learn from other women. Build a fleet of women agents who can practically demonstrate the use of specific products and features through in-person meetings and create ‘how-to’ video content.
- Provide opportunities for progressive learning by integrating knowledge videos at different points in her experience — slowly building her knowledge and confidence one step at a time.
- Create ways of trying out micro-transactions (eg. Rs.1 transfers) to build her confidence and trust in using digital financial services.
- Provide an “always-on” customer help service for her to fall back on in case of any errors or confusion.
Learnings on the future of women and money
Just providing financial access for women isn’t enough. Learning from the successes of Mann Deshi, we realised that it is not enough for organisations and businesses in the financial sector to be just capital providers or access points — they must truly embrace being a woman’s trusted partner in her financial success, helping build her financial education and digital confidence along the way, in order to find success in these markets. Financial services and tools must be intentionally designed with women in mind, and responsive to the very real gender norms, behaviours, challenges, and opportunities that come with that.
While Covid-19 has furthered financial challenges for many living in rural areas, it has also accelerated digital transformation in countries like India. Now, it seems like a ripe moment in time to build upon growing digital adoption to help build a strong foundational base for learning for these women.
Ultimately, our experience with the women of Mhaswad left us inspired and in awe of their resilience, positivity, and drive to do better for their families. We look forward to continuing this work.
Have your own insights and experiences to share? Get in touch with the Last Mile Money team — we’re always looking for new collaborators in this space.
