Design Expo 2014: Online Discussion - Building Livelihoods

Land and property titles as well as equitable inheritance and ownership laws are vital

That brings us to the end of this live session. We'll leave this discussion open, so please do continue to post your comments.

A huge thanks to our panel and all of you who made time to join us today.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Business Fights Poverty Design Expo 2014. We will have an online written discussion, like this one, that will focus on "Delivering Water and Sanitation" (15.30 BST / 10.30 ET), and a Google Hangout on "Successful Product and Service Design" (16.30 BST / 11.30 ET). I hope you can join us for those!

Also be sure to check out the online exhibition here: http://designexpo.businessfightspoverty.org/design-expo/

Hi Alexa, we would agree with your comments. Gender focus begins in business case exploration; and, ultimately, in portfolio execution. For our initial portfolio activities, user suitability by demographic parsing {age, gender, cultural expectations} was vital in final “human factors” development. And, product suitability was governed by these initial “voice of customer” and needs development activities. I would be interested in your comments regarding "product range," especially as pertaining to rural water activities / applications.

Sarah Mills - Gender Programme Officer at iDE UK. I agree that gender is essential to marketing and distribution models. At iDE we are looking at how we can make our Farm Business Advisor model more accessible and appropriate for women farmers, as we have had feedback that women farmers prefer to interact with women extension agents and it's well known that women receive the tiny minority of extension services. A challenge is ensuring all FBAs we work with are gender sensitive, and that we predict and mitigate any potential unintended negative consequences such as arousing husbands' suspicion if their wives interact with a male FBA etc. The issues that arise are as Crisprim mentioned differ on a case-by-case basis, and so I feel another challenge is for distribution models working through markets to be sensitive enough to the needs of women without becoming too interventionist in how they are delivered.

I do agree which means it may take time in some places, but the important thing is to begin the process

I am in conversation with UNW regarding how those principles can be more effective for empowering women in business

In India 36% of the women are involved in the agricultural workforce, 73% in livestock. Out of this, 78% of the women are involved in manual work and 1% of them carry a mobile phone throughout the day. So, the dissemination of best practices and the mode of dissemination will vary. The approach that could address a few challenges would ideally include "gender responsiveness". Knowing the woman, using a design thinking approach to create a product/service, and creating an accountability to it would have an impact on them.

That is just one piece of the big puzzle Morgane.

Thank you Zahid and other panelists!.

Thank you Zahid for moderating this discussion, and thank you to all the other panelists and contributors! A very interesting conversation and a great learning opportunity.

Thank you to the other panelists and all the participants. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Be sure to follow us @FarmingFirst

Good afternoon, my name is Fanny Boulloud and I work for a Swiss Fundation, Antenna Technologies as the safe water program coordination for Asia and the knowledge capitalisation (i.e.business models documentation).

Antenna Technologies has developped a thorough approach around a technologie (WATA), which is a low cost mini-chlorinator, or how to produce chlorine remotly with simply water and salt. But my role in Antenna is to support programmes in Asia around social marketing.