"Quem segura o dia de amanhã na mão?": mulheres, endividamento e reprodução social

Abstract

This thesis aimed to understand the indebtedness of the working class in Brazil from a critical perspective, centered on the articulation between the financialization of capital, the superexploitation of labor power, and social reproduction. It sought to highlight the specific contours this phenomenon assumes in a dependent and peripheral economy like Brazil’s, demonstrating how debt becomes a structuring mechanism of contemporary capitalist accumulation, functioning as a necessary mediation for the reproduction of life and particularly subjugating working women—especially Black, poor, peripheral women, heads of households, and gender and sexual dissidents. The central hypothesis guiding this research is that the indebtedness of the Brazilian working class, far from being the result of mere household budget mismanagement, expresses a broader trend of the valorization of interest-bearing and fictitious capital, which takes on the specific traits of a dependent economy. This trend penetrates the superexploited and financialized social reproduction of labor power, imposing degrading conditions of survival and subservience upon the entire working class, but especially upon women. Anchored in the historical-dialectical materialist method, the research articulates the contributions of the Marxist Theory of Dependency and the Social Reproduction Theory, adopting a qualitative, theoretical, and documentary approach, grounded in secondary sources and consolidated references from the Marxian tradition that, although not directly addressing debt, offer crucial insights for its critical understanding. As a contribution, this thesis presents an expanded reading of indebtedness, committed to uncovering its concealed dynamics. It shows that in contexts like Brazil — shaped by structural racism, imperialist domination, dependency, and neoliberal hegemony — financialization deepens historical patterns of labor subordination, while debt ceases to be a secondary condition and becomes a central mechanism of social reproduction, operating in gendered, racialized, and territorialized ways