New Books in Economics Isabelle Guérin et. al., "The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and Capitalism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Nov 29, 2025
Isabelle Guérin, a Senior Research Fellow focused on gender and debt, explores the intersection of kinship, sexuality, and capitalism in her recent work. She discusses the gendered nature of debt, particularly how Dalit women in Tamil Nadu navigate a biased credit market. The podcast delves into the moral pressures surrounding debt repayment that affect women's identities and agency. Guérin reveals how women's bodies become viewed as collateral and highlights their active roles in sustaining families amidst economic constraints. This deep ethnographic study sheds light on the broader implications of women's debt in capitalist society.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Statistics Hide Women's Debt
- Official statistics often ignore gendered debt by merging women's borrowing with household or spouse data.
- This invisibility explains why gender rarely figures in major reports on household financial vulnerability.
Sexual Division Of Debt
- Women and men face different credit sources, repayment roles, and bodily stakes in debt relations.
- Guérin calls this a
Capitalism Articulates Kinship And Credit
- Capitalism links with kinship and sexual norms to produce predictable debt targets.
- Guérin shows lenders target women because social structures make them reliable payers.
