Debt & Gender Justice
Debt & Gender Justice
More than 3 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than they do on health or education, and when public services decline, the care burden on households increases and women shoulder this cost. The following debt stories explore how gender justice and debt justice are inseparably intertwined.
Egypt
by Manar Abdelaziz
Egypt has experienced a sharp rise in both external and domestic debts over the past decade. According to Egypt’s Finance Ministry data, external debt has multiplied 4.4 times between 2019 and 2026, and domestic debt 3.5 times in the same period. This accumulation together with the fact that most of Egypt’s debt is domestic, which bears costlier interest rates, has led to a very high debt service burden on the government’s budget. This peaked in 2024, when Egypt devoted half of government revenue to external debt service.
Most of the new borrowing is devoted to paying existing debts and 87 per cent of tax revenue goes directly to pay interest to external and domestic creditors. This has led a decline in real spending on public workers’ wages, health, education and social protection. Health expenditure, for example, makes up just one-third of what is devoted to repaying external debt service.
Under different IMF programmes, the Egyptian government has been implementing austerity measures in order to tackle the high levels of debt. Not only is austerity leading to a reduction in public spending, but also to cutting subsidies and liberalising the prices of a number of goods and services, including fuel, electricity, food, drinking water, medicine and health services, causing successive waves of price hikes, aggravated by two currency devaluations. Inflation peaked at 38 per cent in September 2023 and food prices rose 68.2 per cent during that year.
IMF-led austerity cuts and a tax system that leans heavily on consumption (VAT and payroll taxes) combined with high inflation, erodes people’s rights and their purchasing power, a situation that affects women in particular. As the main providers of food and energy for their families, the burden to boost household income falls on women and girls, often by taking underpaid, precarious and informal work.
Sri Lanka
by Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and WeWomenLanka
Since defaulting on its external debt payments in 2022, Sri Lanka has been in a deep debt crisis. At the time of default, the country’s domestic external debt amounted to US$ 41.5 billion, with domestic debt totalling a further $42.1 billion . Of the former, up to 43 per cent was owed to private creditors. In 2021, before the default, Sri Lanka devoted more than half (57.3 per cent) of its government revenue annually on external debt service. This ratio has since been brought down to 25.6 per cent in 2025, due to a very harsh austerity programme and debt restructuring. However, the external debt burden remains too high. Estimates by erlassjahr.de indicate that the country will have to use an average of 22.9 per cent of government revenues for debt service payments in the years 2026- 2028. The debt restructuring didn’t deliver sufficient debt relief, private creditors ended up being paid around 21 per cent more than bilateral creditors, and the country hasn’t still resolved the debt crisis.
The IMF has played a central role in the current debt crisis. While necessary for advancing debt restructuring, the IMF programme imposed one of the sharpest and fastest fiscal adjustments ever - equal to nearly 8 per cent of GDP over three years. What was seen by some as a rapid way to stabilise the economy, was felt by many to be harsh and harmful austerity, including reduced public expenditure, public-sector wage cuts, energy subsidy removal without adequate safety nets, and regressive tax increases, all of which deepen hardship for ordinary people. This has led to increased cost of living. Sri Lanka’s public health expenditure went from 11.3 per cent of the government expenditure in 2021, prior to the debt default, to 6.3 per cent in 2023, once it was in a full blown debt crisis. When a government cannot afford to invest in public health, it is the most vulnerable, particularly women, who suffer and end up indebted to be able to pay for medical bills or basic access to food or housing.
The crisis that Sri Lanka is facing is also a climate, food and gender justice issue. The country relies on the apparel industry and its exports to access foreign currency in order to repay external debts. It's an industry where around 70 per cent of its workers are women with low wages who have to work long hours and don’t have access to social protection or proper public health systems.
In the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah, civil society groups demanded urgent revision of the debt restructuring agreement, major debt reduction, an immediate standstill on debt servicing, and climate finance as grants rather than loans. They argue that IMF conditions perpetuate a debt-climate trap that weakens resilience and erodes social protections, while 6.3 million people face food insecurity. Women and girls are particularly impacted by these compounding crises. hey are among the first to be affected by shortages, inflation, care burdens and the collapse of livelihoods, as they act as “shock absorbers” of fiscal consolidation. When the state withdraws, unpaid care work expands inside households.