Bad debt: The women’s mobilization against the financial industry in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This article offers a first person account of women’s mobilization against banking and microfinance sectors in Kyrgyzstan. It focuses on the key factors for the evolution of the anti-debt movement, and women’s political strategies to problematize interest and to denaturalize the discourse of financial inclusion. For many years, the financial industry has operated a gendered process of neoliberal capital accumulation under the guise of empowerment that has produced tensions between transnational capital and marginalized women. Building upon Bourdieusian ideas on social movements, the study shows the significance of strain and situational definition in the formation of the anti-debt mobilization. The article uses in-depth interviews with the leaders and activists of the anti-debt movement and borrowers to explore how gender, class and capital were intertwined. It contributes to the literature on post-Soviet politics by challenging the dominant elite-centered frameworks, which are inadequate to explain local movements and gendered activism.

Social Reproduction of Post‐Soviet Migrant Labour: Braiding the International Political Economy

“…In the course of it, “state welfare institutions became delegitimised and defunded … The Soviet welfare states became post‐Soviet debtfare states” (Sanghera and Satybaldieva 2021:34; see also Tutumlu 2019)—and with deeply gendered consequences. A rapid feminisation of poverty is one of the more vivid consequences of this “transition” to new capitalist “normality” (Satybaldieva 2021; see also Cookson 2016). This is seen in the hardship of remittance‐dependent “migrant sending societies” in fulfilling their reproductive duties.…”

From Neoliberal Dreams to Precarity: Micro-Entrepreneurs and Family Debt in Kyrgyzstan

“…The neoliberal commodification of money afforded financiers 11 the capacity to laden most of the population with high-interest debt, and then siphon off a share of their income as their just reward, leaving a trail of dispossession and destruction behind them. 12 Standing 13 explicitly connects precarity to finance in the form of unsustainable debt that enriches lenders by impoverishing borrowers. Finance plays a critical role in contemporary capitalism, enabling lenders to extract income through interest by virtue of having property rights over money.…”

Women entrepreneurship and microfinance: implications on the mental well-being of informal traders in Lagos, Nigeria

“…It evolved as a financial inclusion procedure for women entrepreneurs who cannot access traditional financial services due to their level of informality, gender and insufficient collateral (Banerjee et al ., 2015). Specifically, microfinance programs are designed to economically empower and proffer avenues for financial liberation to actively poor women (Abosede and Azeez, 2019; Satybaldieva, 2021), thus providing a departure from the conventional borrowing from formal financial institutions at a high-interest rate to lending from informal financial institutions at a low-interest rate (Yunus and Jolis, 1999).…”

“…Although these tactics have proved effective, as evidenced by the high repayment of debts, they could have a lasting impact on loan defaulters and, by extension, their relatives. Many become psychologically imbalanced, experience low self-esteem, slide into depression, contemplate suicide or encounter other mental health issues (Olayiwola, 2016; Satybaldieva, 2021). For instance, some traders in rural Bangladesh resorted to selling their kidneys and liver to repay microcredit loans.…”