Poor Women and their Money: between Daily Survival, Private Life, Family Obligations and Social Norms

Abstract

This article examines the complexity and diversity of women’s informal financial practices and circuits using data from surveys conducted in Senegal and South India. A micro level analysis reveals the subtlety and complexity of these practices and circuits: apart from economical constraints, these practices express, reproduce, update and sometimes modify the range of personal and social relations in which these women are embedded. Our analysis also reflects the burden of the current norms and institutions for women of the two social groups studied, particularly with respect to matrimonial alliances, property rights and access to the labour market. Moreover, our analysis highlights the ongoing process of interpretation, adjustment and, sometimes, circumvention of these norms, and it is precisely this incessant work of adaptation that explains the heterogeneity of the arrangements and trajectories that we observed.