Rural Women in BoP Supply Chain

Initiatives that prepare rural women to become sales agents or distributors are growing, from early but now obsolete effort in selling mobile talk time, to present initiatives in selling solar lanterns, sanitary napkins and a wide range of consumer products, the opportunities can continue to grow.

As long as product needs and desires are identified in rural communities, there may be opportunities to include women in sales and distribution with basic training and resources. We call them women entrepreneurs. Irrespective of what products are being sold, the goals are to give them jobs, raise their income level, enhance their skills and give them a renewed sense of confidence to work. Indeed those are well intentioned initiatives, but what evidence is available to compare their progress against their original goals and poverty alleviation?

Even if demands are tangible and communities are willing to pay, it's impossible to claim that such initiatives work well with sales data alone. So far, there is really no hard evidence to show that the income source can be sustainable and the income growth is significant enough to uplift women and their families from poverty.

There is also a lack of data and broader discussion on several key aspects, such as overcrowded space in selling the same products within small communities, along with related issues of limited mobility and similar initiatives (although different products) competing for limited income. We also don't really know how women entrepreneurs mitigate negative impact of microloan default when projected demands fail to materialize due to unpredictability of income source and purchase behavior of rural poor.

For example, Solar Sister talk about impact on women based on doubled income level in general and the number of women entrepreneurs they train, this basic quantitative output is insufficient to make an objective assessment to back up promises of meaningful social change.

Over the long term, I believe we need cumulative insight from these initiatives in producing rural women entrepreneurs since studying them in isolation based on product categories can hardly reveal the extent of social impact. There is a need of better understanding of effective strategy in engaging rural women in supply chain and at what value chain of social impact such initiatives can effectively deliver. Do they work well at the stage of job creation and income increase? Or can they influence more systemic social change? It's only possible when we investigate deeper and generate more solid evidence.