debt bearers: how women sustain capitalism

Isabelle Guérin

La Découverte, 256 pages, 2026

Why you should look at it:
√ A groundbreaking comparative study of women's economic roles in sustaining global capitalism

√ An essential contribution to contemporary debates on labor, rights, and gender relations
√  An accessible study on the political and moral economies of debt, by a leading  expert

Forget Wall Street and Shanghai where algorithms move billions, the global economy runs on the backs of indebted women. They negotiate, borrow and even sacrifice themselves to survive. From France to Tamil Nadu, Senegal to Morocco, Isabelle Guérin tracks these women and uncovers the vital role they play in keeping the global economy alive. They watch over their family, count every penny, go into debt to feed, house, care for, and marry off they loved ones. They negotiate, beg, and sometimes sell themselves. And always, they pay. Without them, the system would grind to a halt.

 By blending ethnography, statistical surveys, and engaged storytelling, Guérin reveals a side of capitalism shaped by women’s shame, exhaustion, and invisible labor, exposing patriarchy for what it truly is: a regime of permanent debt. Debt Bearers challenges us to rethink our debt model and reveals how the global economy is inseparable from kinship, sexuality, and survival. To rethink debt is to rethink who and what we truly value.

Isabelle Guérin is a socioeconomic, director of research at IRD and Cessma, and affiliated with the French Institute in Pondicherry. She co-founded and co-directs the Observatory of Rural Dynamics and Social Inequalities in South India. She has published numerous works on how finance deepens inequality, how people fight back, and research methods that combine real life experience and statistics. She is the co-author of The Indebted Women (Stanford, 2023) and Social Reproduction, Solidarity Economy, Feminism and Democracy: Latin America and India (Palgrave Macmillan 2021.)