Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
Caroline Shenaz Hossein: The Banker Ladies and the Power of the Informal
November 17, 2025 at 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
| Location: | A602 Loeb Building |
| Cost: | Free |
Political Science Speaker Series presents:
The Banker Ladies and the Power of the Informal
Dr Caroline Shenaz Hossein (BA, LLB, MPA, PhD)
Canada Research Chair Tier 2 and Associate Professor of Global Development and Political Science, University of Toronto Scarborough
Member of the new college, The Royal Society of Canada
Founder of the The Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE) Collective
Radical Black feminist co-operators engage in globalizing solidarity economies through a specific form of mutual aid – formally referred to as Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs)–to meet livelihood needs. These women call themselves the Banker Ladies, and the ROSCAs they run are rooted in equity, collectivity and self-help to fight against erasure and exclusion. Members decide on the rules and processes of how to make regular contributions to a fund that is given in whole or in part to each member in turn.
This lecture draws on empirical work that involves interviews with hundreds of Black women in the Caribbean, Canada as well as in Ghana and Ethiopia of her recently published book, The Banker Ladies. This research also calls out the erasure, the citational blindness and harms happening to feminist scholars doing this kind of anti-capitalist research. In valuing informal institutions, as well as acknowledging and remunerating the work of the Banker Ladies is a move towards inclusive financial economies, and by extension it can revolutionize the field of international development.