Microcredit and repayment in Colombia: gender, governmentality and relational work.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20328771

This dissertation examines the role of gender, governmentality and relational work in explaining why women microcredit clients in Colombia show high rates of repayment. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observations, and financial diaries, I show how low default rates of microcredit are directly related with the gendered household structure, the ways in which women adopt technologies of financial calculations, and the kind of social relations between credit analysts and women clients. Taken together, this project contributes to understand the multiple and complex relations between finance and society in developing economies such as the case of Colombia.--Author's abstract