ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on interactions between debt and gender, both now being built into norms of global governance. This looks into this in several contexts-in China, in India, and in Burkina Faso-that bring out particular declensions of the debt/gender relationship, all of them pointing to an aggravation of the indebtedness of women in material, monetary, and imaginary terms. It also explores some of these avenues in a comparative study of contrasting examples noted in India, China, and Burkina Faso. The chapter explains the general mechanisms of women's debt and over indebtedness. Women are both objects and subjects of this unbridled consumption, as can be seen in particular in meetings organised on the Internet and in face-to face encounters between middle-class urban women and men. The situation of women in rural milieus in India is provided with an example. The chapter also focus on the effects of microcredit on women's indebtedness.
