Entrepreneurial Women in a Saturated Marketplace: How Gendered Power Shapes Experiences of Debt in Rural Cambodia

Abstract

Debt can be both a path to freedom and prosperity and a source of exploitation. This article analyses the embodied debt relations of rural shop owners in Cambodia to show how gender, class, and ethnic relations of power shape people’s ability to benefit from micro-credit. Drawing on 25 interviews with rural shop owners, the article analyses how the expansion of micro-finance loans for Khmer and Indigenous women to set up micro-businesses with little capital has encouraged an over-supply of rural shops. Struggling shop owners seek to retain loyal customers and perform obligations of altruism rooted in gender and ethnic norms by offering interest-free credit to customers, a practice that brings benefits to communities but entails gendered risks and embodied labour that is disproportionately borne by poorer women. This analysis reveals how formal debt can articulate with traditions of reciprocal assistance in ways that expand reciprocal bonds, while also enabling exploitation. The expectations placed on “entrepreneurial women” neglect the structural conditions of loan saturation and the intersectional relations of social power that shape people’s ability to run small businesses.