Mothers: savviest internet users!
One of the core beliefs shared by myself and the Maya team (www.maya.com.bd), is that women, particularly those we see every day in our country Bangladesh, are like Superwomen. They have a huge amount of responsibilities in their day-to-day lives, and whether they are daughter or mother or sister, their combined efforts result in them practically running the average Bangladeshi household. It comes as no suprise then that it is indeed women that are controlling over 65% of all global consumer spending, amounting to $12 trillion of a total $18.4 trillion (BCG, 2010). I'm sure that most will agree that the household spending in Bangladesh would resemble this ratio with perhaps even more of the total being controlled by women. With so many responsibilities thrust upon women, not least that of allocating the household budget to purchase the products and services required for day-to-day life, it is clear that in a country like Bangladesh where so much is expected from them, they are largely not getting enough information and guidance to make the best choices. In Bangladesh, where there is a major lack of structured support for mothers and families and this represents a major opportunity for technology to play a huge role. It is a challenging problem however due to the lack of time mothers have at their disposal and when assessing the macro factors such as literacy and access to internet. In advanced economies such as the UK or USA, women benefit greatly from accessing the internet, from their computers and/or mobile phones, to provide them with utility in their daily lives. It is common knowledge that mother turn to the internet to find what they are looking for and eMarketer (one of the most respected online research firms) states: "Mums online are actually incredibly savvy and influential. Keeping up with their children alone puts them on the leading edge of new technologies and online activities". It is also important to note that mothers are very proactive about sharing their knowledge and experiences and the internet is a fantastic channel for this. Those of you who use Facebook may relate to the following ad-hoc, informal study: I spent some a week last year 'gently' tracking interactions of my Bangladeshi Facebook friends who are mothers and compared that to friends who are not. Interestingly, my friends who were mothers recorded 400% more interactions i.e. status updates, comments and photo uploads. Mothers online actively seek out content on the web ranging from information about breastfeeding and household product reviews to advice on how to go about finding a school for your children. Of course there are many online services that provide information to women about their health this in particular is a highly underserved area in Bangladesh. Related to this, whether it be content about how to care for a baby or more personal health topics, there is not clear route for a women to find this information beyond their mother or sister and in many cases doctors and authorities remain inaccessible. Women have the right to learn about the facts for themselves and where appropriate learn from others who may have already gone through the same experiences. Technology is already playing a key role here in Bangladesh in empowering. There are fantastic projects already operating in Bangladesh like MAMA that is distributing simple audio and text messages to women through mobile phones and Amadeyr Cloud that is aiming to provide rich audio/visual content to households through the distribution of tablet devices in rural areas. Maya's objective is to give women access to high quality, rich and dynamic information through the website (www.maya.com.bd) and mobile applications whilst also partnering with initiatives across Bangladesh to further extend the reach of such content. Importantly, Maya aims to address the need for women to be able to exchange information with each another in a safe community environment and have already seen hundreds of instances where a user's query is being resolved by another Maya user or by one of our Community Managers. The most popular query topic from Maya users since launch in September 2011 has been to do with breastfeeding which leads us to believe that women find it difficult to glean the advice they need from other sources. Many might think that the internet is not a viable channel right now. There are in fact 2 million women with access to internet from "large screen" devices right now in Bangladesh, with many millions more accessing via mobile devices. These numbers are expected to grow 5 times by 2020 (BCG, 2010). Another indicator is the search behavior on Google Bangladesh where on average, there are over 300,000 monthly searches locally (Keyword Tool, May 2011) to do with pregnancy and maternity. This indicates that every single month, thousands of women in Bangladesh are searching on the internet for information on topics that are relevant to them. Technology is a crucial "enabler" as we look to empower women in this country with access to information. Personal computers, tablet devices and mobile phones are great channels for distributing content at scale and the internet is the ideal platform to generate dialogue, capture knowledge and build an active, engaged community.
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