Microcredit and Women Moneylenders: The Shifting Terrain of Credit in Rural Senegal

Perry, Donna L.

doi:10.17730/humo.61.1.dju40406h8cdp92y

Cited by 32 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Rahman (1999) and Sinha and Matin (1998) describe similar practices in Bangladesh. 42 Similarly, Perry (2002) found that female microcredit clients act as moneylenders in rural Senegal. As the quotation suggests, land sale used to be highly exceptional.…”

Section: Institutional Change: Credit Land and Social Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Literature research has revealed that the wider consequences of microcredit on society are poorly studied and understood (Develtere and Huybrechts 2005;Perry 2002). Research on the longer-term effects of microcredit is in its infancy (Ahlin and Jiang 2008;Khandker 2005;Moll 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Qualitative approaches have been recognized as in a privileged position to unravel and interpret the processes at play in microcredit interventions (Hulme 2000;Rahman 1999). Still, to date microcredit has received limited sociological and anthropological attention (recent exceptions include , Lont and Hospes (2004) and Perry (2002)). These methodological and thematic research gaps are more pronounced in the Ethiopian context, where little is known about the impact of microcredit programs (Borchgrevink et al 2003;Getachew Teka and Yishak Mengesha 2006;Getaneh Gobezie and Garber 2007;Sebstad 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Role of Farmers and Informal Institutions in Microcredit Programs in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Segers¹,

Dessein²,

Develtere³

et al. 2010

Perspect Global Dev Technol

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Section: Institutional Change: Credit Land and Social Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Role of Farmers and Informal Institutions in Microcredit Programs in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Segers¹,

Dessein²,

Develtere³

et al. 2010

Perspect Global Dev Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The kinds of power dynamics that may lead to contestation are reflected both in traders' resentment over financial losses and in degrees of autonomy enjoyed by those who have a great deal of control over their own labor. For groups whose projects require physical labor, such as a garden or a mill, the allocation of women's labor is crucial, and likely to reflect internal power dynamics of the group (Perry, 2002). Very few traders in the sample (5%) are involved in non-trade groups.…”

Section: Women's Organizations and The Ambiguity Of Solidarity And Admentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These women's ability to benefit from relative autonomy reflects an unequal power dynamic in which they are able to limit obligations attached to the GIE, while benefiting from the status attached to the group. When these women provide less labor than others in their groups, it is very likely to result in resentment on the part of women who work more (Perry, 2002;Venema & van Eijk, 2004).…”

Section: Women's Organizations and The Ambiguity Of Solidarity And Admentioning

confidence: 99%

Adverse Incorporation and Microfinance among Cross-Border Traders in Senegal

Howson

2013

World Development

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The hidden labor of repayment: Women, credit, and strategies of microenterprise in northern Honduras

Hayes

2017

Economic Anthropology

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Microlending programs, commonly directed at women and presented as a solution to global poverty, provide borrowers credit to support small, informal income-generating activities. These initiatives have garnered much attention from anthropologists, who have long been interested in the social life of credit and debt. Despite numerous anthropological studies critiquing the social and economic consequences of such lending practices, they continue, bolstered by the affective dimensions of philanthropic marketing and the current embeddedness of microloans in local economies. This contradiction has led to more recent ethnographic work demonstrating the interaction of microloans with other forms of debt and credit in the social economy of borrowers. Building on this recent work, this article draws on ethnographic data from microloan borrowers in northern Honduras and the Bay Islands and contends that the activities associated with microlending participation and repayment may be understood as a form of productive, though hidden, labor. The article suggests further avenues of inquiry into the long-term economic and cultural transformations that microlending has precipitated."Todo el mundo opera con préstamos!-Everyone operates with loans!" exclaimed a woman during a group meeting of microloan borrowers in a small coastal town in Honduras. In this observation, she summarized the experience of many women on the northern coast and in the Bay Islands of Honduras who have come to rely on microloans as an accessible livelihood strategy. Microlending 1 agencies are widespread here and, for the most part, loan primarily to women who run small, informal, often itinerant businesses. During this meeting, the group lamented that microloan repayment schedules were fixed, whereas the women themselves, their working patterns, and their multiple work activities were not. They discussed the difficulty of coordinating loan repayment schedules, local 15-day salary expectations, and numerous unpredictable and far-reaching informal credit relationships. The stakes for balancing such socioeconomic obligations are high for women operating small businesses in the informal economy. They must ensure that loans are paid off on time and that personal relationships on which sales depend do not become strained. Striking this balance of credit and debt management in the face of microloan repayments requires a unique kind of time-intensive commitment that, I argue here, makes up the hidden labor of microfinance.Schuster (2015), in an extensive study of microfinance among borrowers and agencies in Paraguay, notes that ideas about creditworthiness encourage women borrowers to become flexible economic subjects, making the observation that women invest considerable effort and work in completing microloan repayments and covering multiple debts. Building on Schuster's (2014:573) observations, I draw on ethnographic research from northern Honduras among women microloan borrowers to examine the extent to which this kind of "labor of completando [completing]" imp...

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Microcredit and Women Moneylenders: The Shifting Terrain of Credit in Rural Senegal

Cited by 32 publications

References 11 publications

The Role of Farmers and Informal Institutions in Microcredit Programs in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

The Role of Farmers and Informal Institutions in Microcredit Programs in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Adverse Incorporation and Microfinance among Cross-Border Traders in Senegal

The hidden labor of repayment: Women, credit, and strategies of microenterprise in northern Honduras

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