The Non-Negotiables: Ecosystem
In the early WIP days of the toolkit, when I didn’t even have the non-negotiables or the concept of it, Ecosystem was already present. It was then called holistic, (which I incorporated into our Women-Centric Eye tool), and then called it Lifecycle (highly inspired by a conversation with Ann-Elise Francis) and finally closed on Ecosystem (with the help of our contributor process as we came closer to hitting publish on the toolkit). Why am I telling you this story? Because this one might be the most complex one (if you’ve been following along, you might say – gets even more complex?!).
So let’s get into it. What is ecosystem in the context of women-centric design and why does it matter?
The definition: Women live in a world of norms that work against them. It shows up as different barriers in their lives: maybe as information asymmetry (think of the consequences of financial literacy reaching someone later in life), or limited access to resources (think no seed capital for starting a business), or smaller networks (think less support in an entrepreneurship journey).
Why it matters: When we create solutions and overlook the broader ecosystem, we might serve women a bit, but chances are – we are exacerbating inequities.
Let’s take an example to really understand this.
An educational program in Africa exists to train those hoping to become farmer-entrepreneurs. They have been running a successful program, but realise that there are very few women who are able to engage. So, they decide to create a women-only cohort. Women sign up, but overtime, some of them stop coming to the classes (family responsibilities). Those who finish the program are unable to start a successful business (no seed capital). Those who do find the capital and start a business run into financial complexities (information asymmetry). Some male farmers may run into this as well, but women are way more likely to.
So how do we solve for this? We tweak our educational program by taking into account the ecosystem. What does that look like?
Putting into practice
To ensure women keep coming to the classes, the program had to offer the families seedling as a gift to make up for the hours women weren’t at home. To ensure that women are able to start their own business after the program, they committed to buying the first harvest so that women had the seed capital they needed. To ensure women had the business acumen & lingo they needed, they offered finance & accounting classes.
This – acknowledging that women have these barriers & designing for them (even though it might not be the most perfect solution) – is what ecosystem is all about. Because simply making a women’s only cohort can only do so much. There is a main question you can ask yourself to design for women’s ecosystems: what are the ‘adjacent opportunity areas’ where women may need additional support to level the playing field? Asking this question has led to gender practitioners:
Adding menstruation & reproductive health classes to a sports program – because overall health is an important part of sports.
Starting a fund for a women’s focused startup accelerator — because the investment readiness only comes in handy if there is investment go around.
Creating a digital wallet within a women-focused tele-health app for both patients and doctors to increase spending & earning agency in a context where women aren’t allowed to own bank accounts.
I remember when I was trying to gather feedback for the Ecosystem theme, I got a bit of pushback: how can an adjacent opportunity area be called a non-negotiable - the two things are in tension with each other. But the more I live in the complexity of this theme, the more I appreciate how it pushes me from designing for the moment to designing for the whole.
Resources to learn more:
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