Post-pandemic Poverty: Debt and the Feminisation of Finance in Marginal Sites

In Latin America, a recent driver of inequality and economic deprivation is growing credit card debt among low-income families who were previously excluded from formal sector consumer credit. This financialisation and targeting of women in particular for unsecure sub-prime lending is investigated through ethnographic research on women’s struggles over credit access and debt payments, as well as the corporate retailers that offer credit cards upon credit assessment based on algorithmic technologies. Focusing on Brazil and Chile, two countries with powerful credit industries, the project empirically analyses how the increased reliance on credit generates new conditions of poverty and gender inequality in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Theoretically, it expands the concept of extractivism to include finance, as the commodification of women’s data and debt has become a new frontier of digital finance for capital accumulation in marginal sites.