Intersection of Gender and Technology in Bangladesh: Dhaka Phase

Bangladesh is a developing country in South Asia, where the majority of women face a lack of technology exposure because of cultural barriers, norms, and technology literacy. Such factors work as barriers in women’s growth where digital financial inclusion helps women empowerment and equitable decision-making. For the lack of technology exposure, they face difficulties in involving digital financial inclusion. However, the global COVID-19 pandemic opened opportunities to adopt technology for all as well as for women, and traditional banking systems are switching to digital systems where financial technology (fintech) plays an important role in continuing the financial process. In this particular context, the scenario of developing regions is different from developed nations.<br><br>This research explores n=80 participants, mostly focuses on women from 12 different professions, 18-65+ age ranges, and socioeconomic backgrounds (low, middle and high-income) based on World Bank and Pew research stratification in urban (Dhaka City) and non-urban (Tangail district) region in Dhaka division of Bangladesh as a pilot study of six months. The study has qualitatively interviewed 63 Females (79%), 15 Males (19%), and 2 Transgenders (2%), through focus group discussions (FGD) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. In this report, we discuss participants’ societal status, current financial situation, technology usage scenarios, the impact of COVID on finance and fintech adoption, and lastly their perceptions of better fintech design which represent the context of women in Bangladesh with several points of views with the support of the literature review, and analysis of qualitative data. We have also done text analysis and statistical analysis from the qualitative outcomes. Through this research, the notable findings are:<br><br>Societal Structure: Society plays an important role in women’s empowerment through family support (e.g., educational support from parents), and community support (e.g., financial support during an emergency). However, societal structure causes social prejudice (e.g: educated females face difficulties during marriage in low-income families) that works as a barrier to women’s opportunities.<br><br>Women and Finance: The working women take financial responsibilities for their families. Financial responsibilities are equally distributed in low-income families (e.g., Ready-made garment workers) whereas in high-income families (e.g., corporate service holders) women’s earnings are considered as an extra when their husbands contribute enough. However, women from low-income families have limited financial exposure (e.g., structural barriers for going to banks, interest in informal banking), and an information gap about banks (e.g., negative perceptions about banking). Another factor is working women lack risk-taking behavior (e.g., not interested in acquiring bank loans to expand business) because of low confidence.<br><br>Technology and Fintech Experience: Technology and fintech adoption are challenging for low-literate users because of technology complexities (e.g., application interface difficulties), lacking technology literacy (e.g., no formal learning), and discomfort to seek technology support (e.g., women cannot ask randomly for support due to societal norms). However, the majority of the participants have connections with technology and fintech in direct or indirect ways.<br><br>Fintech during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Since the COVID-19 pandemic impacted everyone financially, fintech helped in continuing basic financial operation (e.g., money transaction) and also added opportunities for using technology (e.g., online payment through fintech). However, many of the participants faced negative experiences (e.g., fraud incidents) during the use of fintech. In addition, this initiated a wide digital divide where low-literate and low-income participants fell behind in accessing existing fintech options.<br><br>Better Fintech: User Perception: The participants required an easy and secured fintech application interface (e.g, fewer technical steps with appropriate security features) along with saving facilities (e.g., saving small amounts digitally) in fintech applications that might encourage low-income communities to grow saving tendency as per their perception. Additionally, they are in need of local area-based help centers for fintech to get accessible and immediate support.<br><br>Through this study, we explored wide dimensions of understanding the gender and technology’s intersection in the context of Bangladesh. The findings of this report motivate us to propose some intervention techniques as technology interventions (e.g., easy, secured, and accessible fintech interface), infrastructure interventions (e.g., establishing help centers, training of agents, handling fintech abuse), and policy interventions (e.g., leveraging existing databases, providing financial literacy, encouraging formal banking and saving) that might facilitate all the stakeholders. Finally, through the discussion, we addressed three points as fintech aspect (e.g., the importance and requirement of using secured fintech interface), financial aspect (e.g., the importance of financial literacy, an alternate source of loan and financial engagement), and social aspect (e.g., discussion on financial responsibilities and technology learning and usage centers) that justified our findings with existing literature and the systems and approaches adopted in other countries.