This book demonstrates, from a historical and an economic point of view, how the female contribution has been so determinant in the success of our species, and how it is linked to male dominance. Male hunting and female gathering were the two forces of production during 99% of the life of mankind on Earth. Ethnographic evidence shows that female gathering is more productive and less time-consuming than male hunting. Therefore, the prehistoric communities of Homo sapiens could manage their social labor-time in the most productive way, only if women lent their time to men through the supply of basic energy: a debt that men incurred since the dawn of history, but never acknowledged. It is time now to give the gender economic relations the crucial place they deserve in a theory of human cooperation and sociality, without forgetting that it is necessarily a theory of social inequality.

This handbook highlights the linkages between debt and gender and discusses policies and action taken by international agencies and bilateral donors to promote and integrate gender issues in the provision of development assistance.

Leader of Latin America’s powerful new women’s movement rethinks the meaning of feminist politics Recent years have seen massive feminist mobilizations in virtually every continent, overturning social mores and repressive legislation. In this brilliant and original look at the emerging feminist international, Verónica Gago explores how the women’s strike, as both a concept and collective experience, may be transforming the boundaries of politics as we know it. At once a gripping political analysis and a theoretically charged manifesto, Feminist International draws on the author’s rich experience with radical movements to enter into ongoing debates in feminist and Marxist theory: from social reproduction and domestic work to the intertwining of financial and gender violence, as well as controversies surrounding the neo-extractivist model of development, the possibilities and limits of left populism, and the ever-vexed nexus of gender-race-class. Gago asks what another theory of power might look like, one premised on our desire to change everything.

The first feminist critique of the much-lauded microcredit process in Bangladesh.

Although microcredit programmes have long been considered efficient development tools, many forms of debt-induced distress have emerged in their wake. This has brought to light the problem of over-indebtedness, a topic which has been previously underexplored in the literature. This new book, from a group of leading scholars, explores the manifestations, scale, and economic and social implications of household over-indebtedness in areas conventionally considered as financially excluded. The book approaches debt not only as a financial transaction, but also as a form of social bond, and offers a socioeconomic analysis of over-indebtedness. The volume puts forward a broad definition of over-indebtedness, highlighting its situational and semantic complexity and diversity. It provides a close analysis of local conceptions of debt and over-indebtedness, highlighting frameworks of calculation and the constant renegotiation of their boundaries. On top of this, it looks far beyond microcredit to examine all the financial practices that individuals juggle. The volume argues that over-indebtedness has more to do with social inequalities than financial illiteracy, and should therefore be understood in the light of global trends of financialization. It also reveals the ambiguity of "financial inclusion" policies, and in many respects questions the actions of new credit providers. This book will be valuable reading for students, researchers and policy makers interested in microfinance and development issues.