Abstract
The central argument of the book is that women suffer from multiple forms of indebtedness, not only financial and that this drives them both to take on more debt and to ensure that they can repay financial debts when repayment is due. The book starts with an introductory chapter in which the authors make the point that household debt is an increasingly central underpinning of the financial institutions at the apex of the global economy, and women play an important role in this household debt. Most of the book is on how this works out among Dalit women in villages in South India.
The South Indian villages that are the focus of the book have seen the emergence in the past decade or so of a capitalist credit market targeting women, in an increasingly male-dominated, debt-based, market economy. The book draws on the experiences of Dalit women indebted to relatives, friends, neighbours and commercial financial lenders, and it shows how these different forms of indebtedness are connected. The ethnographic material gives powerful support to the argument that one cannot understand financial debt relationships without considering the links with other forms of indebtedness.
This is an ambitious book building a picture of the different ways in which women are indebted and the ways in which they strive to repay their debts. It gives an account of the dilemmas faced by women juggling loans from multiple sources both to survive and to advance the position of their families. It is unusually rich in its coverage of psychological as well as social and economic aspects of their debt relationships.
The book focuses on informal sector financial debt, most importantly from commercial lenders. It also discusses the fact that women are indebted to kin, friends, neighbours and others in their social networks, both financially and in other ways. There is a chapter on the rise of commercial indebtedness which occurred only in the 2010s. Other chapters go into the role of sexuality in debt relationships, one on the exchange of sexuality for debt and another on relationships with lover/lenders which are ambiguous and complex. There are chapters on kinship debt and on indebtedness to people in women’s social networks. It is acknowledged throughout that Dalit women both benefit from the expansion of commercial credit and pay a high price for doing so.
There is a chapter on the way in which women felt burdened by kinship debt which they constantly strove to repay arguing that financial debt both fed on and strengthened their sense of kinship debt. There had been a transition in these villages from Dalit women being seen as assets to Dalit women being seen as liabilities as the local economy became more masculinized. This led to women being seen as burdens on their marital families. Feelings of debt and obligation, entitlement and guilt permeated their conduct which was driven by their attempts to repay what they felt they owed to their in-laws’ families.
Another chapter is on the rise of financially indebted women in these villages in the recent period. It shows that women learnt from self-help and micro-credit groups in the early 2000s and took on different forms of commercial credit after that. As micro-credit increased and became more commercial so did other borrowing. The most successful women were able to renovate houses, send children to good schools and colleges and get children married well by taking on debt which was expensive, predatory and degrading on terms that men would not accept. This was a form of emancipation for women, but it was limited and of high cost.
The next chapter goes into ‘debt work’ in which significant skills were involved. It meant keeping track of a large variety, multiplicity and complexity of loans. It also meant negotiating with a wide range of lenders over amounts, prices and repayment deadlines, nurturing a network of relationships that enabled access to loans, resorting to different strategies to keep lenders happy and finding money to repay loans on which repayments were due. ‘Debt work’ was a constant worry, preying on women’s minds.
This is followed by a chapter focusing on the ways in which women used their bodies in their relationships with lenders. This ranged from maintaining their respectability, and presentability, to their use of good looks, smiling, flirtation and sexual intercourse. The ordinary fabric of sexuality and monetary exchanges was said to be pervasive and oppressive, and it was high risk. Women talked of the difficulty of maintaining respectability and self-esteem, avoiding reputational damage and being shamed. They went to huge lengths to conceal the sexuality of their relationships from husbands and other family members and from the public. It took a lot for them to manage this. This is one of the chapters that emphasizes the emotional and psychological sides of women’s indebtedness.
This leads on to a chapter on women falling in love with lenders and the ambiguities this involves. Sexuality, feelings and love were intertwined with credit and debt. Women faced ethical dilemmas, judging themselves and feelings of guilt and shame eating away at them from inside. They also engaged in subterfuge, to protect their husbands and their families. There is mention both of husbands’ complicity and of their ignorance, supporting much of what was going on.
The penultimate chapter is on women’s indebtedness to each other, both financially and in other respects. Social relationships played an important part in women’s ability to maintain good repayment records. This depended on their ability to borrow to repay. Their social relationships catered to their need for emotional and other sorts of care, but cash had become a central part of these in a way in which it had not been before. It is also noted in this chapter that while debt cemented friendships, it also divided and excluded. Women’s social relationships involved conflict as well as solidarity.
The final chapter summarizes by stressing the fact that reproducing people requires constant borrowing, repaying, saving and lending and that for Dalit families featured in the book, this involved intense, mainly female, work. The authors go on to note similar findings in other parts of the world. They conclude that ultimately the culprits are patriarchy and credit markets, but variations in the position of women debtors depend on a whole range of other factors as well. It is noted in this chapter that this is a subject that is under-researched.
The book is important in drawing attention to the way in which poor women In rural areas in India have become involved in new financial networks in the recent period and brings out the extent of exploitation that this involves. We know a lot about the various ways in which poor rural women in India were exploited in the past and the price that they paid for this. We know less about how they have been faring under new forms of exploitation that are emerging through the expansion of credit. The book shows that these new forms of exploitation enable women to achieve things they would not otherwise have been able to achieve, but that the price they pay for this is high.
What this book is about may be a fairly extreme case in some senses, but there are enough examples from other parts of the world that show that it is not unprecedented. What makes the case extreme is the fact that in this case, strong forms of patriarchy co-existed with the possibility for women to advance the positions of their families by taking on financial credit. There is something positive about the fact that credit enabled them to do this despite the cost being so high.
The book relies heavily on the testimonies of Dalit women who had used credit in ways that were impressive. The extent to which the women that feature in the book are atypical is not adequately recognized or discussed. Many would not have been able to build these webs of debt or do so at all successfully. Most of the women whose testimonies feature in the book were women who were powerful, emancipated and strong, standing out in the community. Another thing that does not get enough attention is where the money to fund these women’s debt came from. There are occasional references to the contributions of husbands and sons. But one is left wondering about the source of most of it.
There are strong contrasts between the situation in the villages that feature in this book and villages in which women were not able to do anything like this, as was the case before the 2010s in these villages too. There are also other parts of the world where patriarchy is less strong and relatively poor women are able to do more with financial credit than women in these South Indian villages.
This is an important account that adds to our understanding of the increase in indebtedness of women in poor communities. It deserves to be influential. It will be widely read.