“COVID has made Everyone Digital and Digitally Independent”: Understanding Working Women's DFS and Technology Adoption during COVID Pandemic in Bangladesh

Abstract

Women in developing nations lag behind from self-empowerment because of some cultural barriers where the integration of technology and digital financial services helps them to be empowered. On the other hand, to avail such technology-based services as Digital Financial Services (DFS), there are also additional challenges for women in developing countries. During the COVID pandemic, the situation has changed all over where both genders had to rely on and adopt technology for working and financial purposes. Our research is an ongoing research and currently we explored n=20 urban formally working women in Bangladesh to understand how COVID impacts them to adopt technology and technology-based services. These women had comparatively less exploration in digital services before the pandemic. COVID instantly increased their technology adoption significantly. However, COVID grows some negative concerns regarding excessive technology impact on their work-life, kids, and finance. Based on findings, we mention a few design recommendations regarding ways of technology usage that will help women to reduce their excessive technology-adoption concerns and help them to use the technology in better ways.