Enhancing Women’s Quality of Life and Empathy through a Micro-Learning Social Marketing Strategy ($)

“Enhancing Women’s Quality of Life and Empathy” presents the case of the “Orientación Familiar Digital” campaign. That’s “Digital Family Orientation” in English. A university and an international NGO jointy developed, executed, and evaluated the campaign and a related protocol. The campaign improved the quality of life of 56 women. It was conducted in the area of Argentina with the highest poverty and violence levels.

An interdisciplinary consortium developed the campaign and chose to focus on empathy. Empathy plays a fundamental role in the quality of intra-family relations. It impacts the development of people’s pro-social behavior, leadership, and decision-making capability. Boosting empathy can improving interpersonal relations, increasing the quality of life of women living in social exclusion.

The campaign is the first Latin American campaign of this sort. It used digital micro-learning and instant messaging (WhatsApp) in a context of pandemic preventative social isolation. The campaign delivered personalized messages and short fragments of educational content compatible with multiple occupations. It also provided, on completion, an official certificate from Universidad Austral. the first module raised women’s awareness on the importance of empathy. The second one promoted emotional intelligence growth. The third showed how to develop emotional and cognitive empathy as well as putting change into action. The fourth module focused on planning and turning change into concrete actions.

The protocol and methodology used increased women’s empathy in its critical dimensions. Quantitative pre- and post-intervention self-reporting used validated scales of key empathy dimensions or factors. These included empathic concern, perspective taking, distress, and fantasy. The analysis found that empathy improved significantly at a confidence level of .05.

Qualitative analysis found that beneficiaries gained greater self-control when facing difficult situations. In addition, they experienced more care and compassion for the suffering or unfair treatment of others, especially children. They also learned to be more tolerant, look at situations from different standpoints, and listen to make better decisions. The campaign became a tool for digitalizing an organization, facilitating continuity of its activities amidst pandemic preventive isolation policies.

This case study is included on pages 381-392 in the book “Applied Social Marketing and Quality of Life.” Book details are available at isocialmarketing.org/docs/applied-social-marketing-and-quality-of-life-case-studies and http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-83286-5.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Micro-learning, Empathy, Women, Quality of life