Producing Consumption: Women and the Making of Credit Markets

Abstract

The importance of credit to low-income households is widely recognized, providing a mechanism for managing poverty. In such households women are generally the money-managers, and as such they are significant consumers of credit. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the role that women play in creating and maintaining some credit markets, thereby becoming central to a key means of consumption. Using data from two recent qualitative studies, one on moneylending and one concerned with mail order (both forms of credit widely used in low-income communities), the paper will explore processes whereby access to credit comes to be largely in the hands on women and the continuing importance of gender in the recruitment of customers and maintenance of credit markets. The paper will suggest that the role of credit provider is a consequence of women's economic vulnerability and domestic responsibilities but that the structure and process of credit provision has the potential to reinforce the providers' economic hardship and financial distress. Central to these outcomes is the need to both ‘risk and trust’ in order to develop and maintain the market and thereby earn. The paper will examine how risking and trusting are undertaken and the consequences of a failure of trust for credit providers.