Originally posted on www.youthsave.org

Last week, USAID held an insightful seminar called “Behavior Change Perspectives on Gender and Value Chain Development,” with featured speakers Jennefer Sebstad (who happens to sit on YouthSave’s Expert Advisory Board) and Cristina Manfre. The speakers presented a framework on how gender influences behaviors in upgrading, or improving the performance and competitiveness of, agricultural value chains. Drawing on field research in Ghana and Kenya, the speakers suggest that nudging better performance in money management, business practices, and value chain relationships can facilitate upgrading and help overcome barriers to behavior change. The speakers’ takeaways on money management were particularly relevant and worth highlighting, given much of our recent work incorporating lessons from behavioral sciences, including nudges, to promote asset-building strategies.

Money management, especially the ability to accumulate money for productive investments, is a critical component to upgrading agricultural value chains. However for many women, social norms, inaccessibility of financial services, lack of knowledge, or the unequal distribution of household income, can prevent them from controlling money and subsequently engaging in the upgrading process.

Sebstad and Manfre presented two examples that may nudge women to exercise more control over income after agricultural processors make payments to households. In Ghana, for example, agricultural payments are transferred to savings accounts that men hold, but what if joint-accounts are set up as a default feature? An idea worth testing, the default option could allow women shared control and monitoring rights over household finances, while ensuring household transparency of expenditures and savings. Although either head-of-household could easily opt-out of the joint account if they choose, we’ve seen that default options have made decisions “sticky” across various development initiatives, especially in public health, and could therefore have similar impacts in the context of money management behaviors.

But we should not underestimate the power of nudges. For example, there could be repercussions to nudging joint accounts. If the goal is to ensure women are able to take control of their own finances, depending on the power dynamic of the household, sharing an account with one’s spouse could maintain the status quo. Still, there are alternative approaches to overcome this challenge, such as nudging individual savings. For example, the speakers’ suggest that in Kenya, if agricultural payments made via M-PESA are transferred to individual savings accounts for men or women, it could promote asset accumulation along with women’s individual control over money.

While nudging better money management can affect women’s involvement in upgrading agricultural value chains, their ability to control and build assets has broader implications. Studies have shown that assets for women in developing countries, lead to greater bargaining power, increased investment in children’s education and health, and improved household wellbeing. A compelling reason to nudge young girls to save into adulthood as well. The Nike Foundation is promoting the ‘Girl Effect’ through savings by partnering with organizations like Women’s World Banking, to offer girls in Mongolia and the Dominican Republic with savings accounts. As for Jennefer Sebstad and Cristina Manfre’s, their multi-pronged framework provides key gender insights for value chain upgrading, but also shows us that there are a number of ways to incorporate asset-building strategies into development initiatives.