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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the gendered aspects of household debt in Kenya, focusing on its relationship with social reproduction and financial care value extraction. I proposes a feminist materialist theoretical framework for understanding this conflict in the capitalist accumulation system.

Paper long abstract:

With regard to the changing debt architecture on the African continent, both the financialization of debt, its feminization, and its links to gender inequality and social reproduction have been under-researched. This includes in particular the gendered aspects of intra-household debt. This paper proposes to understand household debt through the feminist IPE lens of social reproduction in the capitalist accumulation regime in order to unravel its gendered dimension: What is the gendered component of household debt in Kenya and how is this relevant to the social reproduction of the household since Covid-19? I argue that private debt brings Kenyan women into the financial system for the profit of the financial institution. Debt related to social reproduction, care-related debt, thus functions as a form of financial care value extraction. I link this to a general crisis tendency of the capitalist accumulation system and summarize that financial care value extraction feeds the ongoing need for value accumulation via dispossession. To fill the above mentioned research gap on the gendered aspects of household debt for social reproduction in a Kenyan context, I propose to operationalize a feminist historical materialist theoretical framework on a qualitative case study in the rural Taita-Taveta region. The concept of social reproduction is used as an interpretive framework to consider the complex relationship between the state and the private household in the age of neoliberal austerity.