Disciplinary Neo-liberal Feminism and the Political Economy of Microfinance and Risk.

Abstract

This article draws on a critical feminist approach to locate poverty alleviation strategies based on microfinance within an analysis of global capital accumulation. It argues that the liberal frameworks of female empowerment and entrepreneurialism that are central to such programmes operate as important legitimising discourses that mask their underlying political, social and economic objectives. In contrast a critical feminist approach more adequately explains the interplay of class and gender that underpin poverty alleviation strategies. This article argues that in the context of reduced social provision and the reprivatisation of social reproduction, poor women have been identified as important new markets for global finance and consumers of debt. In doing so the risks inherent in the expansion of financial markets to the margins have been promoted as incentive and discipline whilst being increasingly born by women and households. The recasting of feminism in a disciplinary neo-liberal form has been central to the incorporation of women into global capital accumulation via the expansion of credit markets, therefore the article argues microfinance programmes are important sites of contestation for the politics of class and gender