2022 Seed Grant Award Problem Statements 

Decent Work and Economic Growth / Education

Problem #8:  Poor Women Workers from the Informal Economy have not Benefitted from the Advancements in Data Science and Analytics

Country/Region of execution: India
Collaborating Organization: Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), founded by Smt. Elaben Bhatt is a member-based organization of 1.6 million poor women workers from Informal Economies across 18 States of India. SEWA also has its presence in neighboring Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. SEWA’s strategy involves working around achieving twin goals of (a) Full employment - employment that provides work, income, and food security and Social Security and (b) Self-reliance – economical & decision-making.  By organizing these women workers to attain full employment, SEWA helps them become autonomous and economically self-reliant both individually and collectively, including decision-making ability. To achieve its goals, SEWA follows an integrated approach:  (a) Organizing for collective strength,  (b) Capacity building to stand firm in a competitive market,  (c) Capital formation for risk mitigation & fight poverty, and  (d) Social security to enhance well-being & productivity.
Problem Statement Description:  Several occupations and sectors have seen the introduction of new technologies, such as satellite imaging, soil and water sensing, and smart irrigation systems, over the past decade to improve productivity. However, poor women workers from the informal economy have not benefitted from these advances in technology and data science. Lack of access to best practices and real-time feedback on how they can boost output in the face of ever-changing environmental, economic, and market conditions contributes to them remaining in the vicious cycle of poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown only worsened the burden on women since it wreaked havoc on the traditional supply chain and disrupted the usual sales channels.  While there is a data collection frenzy, the vast majority of organizations have failed to develop a data culture – that is, a deep, organization-wide comfort level with using metrics to maximize social impact. Every day, immense quantities of field data are collected and stored by organizations for needs assessments, measuring and evaluation, and informing future interventions. While the data gathering means are generally quite different (paper questionnaires, spreadsheets, and online surveys), its end destination after a project is often the same: data silos and on-site servers.  A lot of effort and time goes into collecting huge chunks of data, sometimes repetitive, but the outcome is amiss.  There is a lack of common standards and guidelines to collect and manage data, as a result of which the data points do not speak to one another and do not guide the programmatic decision-making within the organization. Given the work and scale of SEWA, it is crucial that data culture is embedded into the DNA of the organization so that the relevance and impact of the organization grow at pace with a fast-changing world.  Over the next few decades, data science will be a powerful tool in informing organizational decision-making. To improve collective bargaining power of poor women, it is critical to understand what data do collect, why to collect certain data, how to collect that data, and how to use the data effectively. The need of the hour is to design a data strategy framework and data collection framework that guides SEWA and defines how we will collect, manage, and analyze the data. The data strategy framework should also help identify and evaluate disparate external data sources and metadata that could be leveraged to make future data analysis richer. Additionally, there is a need to create a data culture that can create behavioral change among informal sector workers, shifting from reactive to proactive decision-making. An evidence-based, data-driven culture that is integrated within the organization’s DNA will not only help SEWA provide full employment and self-reliance for women but also improve service delivery to members.