The state takes their taxes. Their groups feed each other

This series examines tax justice through a feminist lens. It asks who designs tax systems, who they serve, and who they erase. It has shown how women pay without being seen, how daily levies extract without record, and how the system fails them in sickness, age, and death. This article asks one question. If the state takes their taxes, why must women feed each other.

What taxes promise

Taxes finance public goods. Health. Education. Water. Sanitation. Social protection. They redistribute. They reduce inequality. They bind citizens to the state.

This is the contract.

When women pay, they are not complying. They are contributing. VAT on every purchase. Market fees every morning. Levies on fuel and food. They pay.

They are funding the system that is meant to serve them.

What the state did

The state takes. It does not give.

Clinics have no drugs. Women pay for gloves, for medicine, for delivery. They pay taxes. Then they pay again.

Schools push children out. Fees rise. Classrooms are full or absent. Girls leave first. Women borrow to keep them in school. The state that took their taxes did not carry the cost.

There is no pension for the trader who paid fees for forty years. No income when work stops. No protection when shocks hit.

The contract broke.

The state takes. It does not return.

They pay. It does not count

Women pay constantly. They pay invisibly.

They pay VAT on food, soap, fuel. They pay market fees, toilet fees, waste fees. They pay in cash. They pay daily.

Most of these payments leave no trace. No receipt linked to identity. No record that builds history. No proof of contribution.

They are taxpayers without recognition.

The system counts the revenue. It does not count them.

When women’s groups became banks

Women have always organised. For labour, for care, for survival. That did not begin with policy.

What changed is function.

These groups became financial systems. Savings. Loans. Guarantees. ROSCAs. VSLAs. SLAs.

This shift did not happen by design. It happened under pressure.

Banks exclude. Collateral is required. Formal records are required. Minimum balances are required. Most women in informal economies are locked out.

Income is unstable. Cash flows break. One illness can collapse a household.

Public systems fail. Services do not arrive. Protection does not exist.

So women built alternatives.

They save together. They lend to each other. They insure each other. They enforce repayment. They manage risk.

This is not innovation for its own sake. It is substitution.

This is not success

The growth of these groups is often framed as progress. It is not.

It signals pressure.

Costs are rising. Consumption taxes fall on daily life. Women manage provisioning. They absorb the increase first.

Public systems are weak. Health, education, and social protection do not hold. Groups step in.

Trust in the state is low. People rely on what they can see and control.

The expansion of savings groups is not a sign that the system works. It is evidence that it does not.

The injustice at the centre

Women pay into a system that does not return to them.

They fund it. It does not fund them.

When they need healthcare, they turn to their group.

When they need school fees, they turn to their group.

When they need capital, they turn to their group.

The state that takes offers nothing. The group that has little provides everything.

This is not empowerment. It is extraction layered on abandonment.

Three facts sit at the centre.

Public spending does not redistribute what women pay.

Service delivery fails where it matters most.

The burden of that failure sits with women.

Tax justice is not abstract. It is visible here.

The group that feeds

Twenty women. One room. Coins on the table.

They meet every week. They contribute what they can. They lend. They repay. They support.

When one falls sick, the group pays.

When one needs school fees, the group lends.

When one starts a business, the group backs her.

This is a functioning system.

It is built on trust. On proximity. On repeated action. It enforces discipline without contracts. It manages risk without insurance.

It works.

It also has limits.

The sums are small. The loans sustain trade. They do not build scale. They keep women moving. They do not move them out.

They carry what they can.

They pay twice

Look at what these groups now do.

They fund healthcare. They fund education. They fund social protection. They fund small enterprise. They fund crisis response.

These are public functions.

Women pay taxes for these services. Then they recreate them privately.

They pay twice.

The state takes once. The group compensates again.

This is the system.

When the state uses what women built

The state has noticed these groups.

They are organised. They are reliable. They reach where systems do not.

So programmes move through them. Loans. Training. Livelihood schemes.

On paper, this works.

In practice, the pattern repeats.

The state uses women’s infrastructure. It uses their trust. It uses their labour. It delivers through them.

Risk stays with the group.

Default is absorbed by members. Social pressure enforces repayment. Time is unpaid. Administration is unpaid.

The state counts outputs.

Women carry the system.

Not all groups are real

Some groups are formed to access programmes. They have no history. No trust. No shared life.

They receive loans. Members leave. Repayment collapses.

This is predictable.

Trust cannot be assembled on demand. It cannot be trained in a workshop. It is built over time.

Programmes report numbers. They do not report what holds.

The difference matters.

Real groups sustain. Manufactured groups perform.

The system prefers what it can count.

How much can you borrow to survive

Ask how much a woman can borrow through peer guarantee.

The answer is small.

Enough to buy stock. Not enough to expand. Enough to trade. Not enough to accumulate.

Lenders manage risk. They lend what they can afford to lose.

That is the ceiling placed on women’s futures.

She pays taxes on every transaction. The system extracts at scale. The system lends at the margin.

The mismatch is clear.

Risk did not disappear. It moved

When health systems fail, women absorb the cost.

When credit excludes, women guarantee each other.

When protection is absent, women insure each other.

Now the state also shifts delivery onto them.

Risk sits where it always sits.

With women.

This is a design choice

This is not an accident. It is not a gap. It is a design.

A system that collects widely but does not redistribute is designed that way.

A system that records revenue but not contributors is designed that way.

A system that relies on unpaid social infrastructure is designed that way.

It can be redesigned.

What must change

Recognition comes first.

Women in informal economies are taxpayers. Their payments must be recorded. Their contribution must count.

Investment must follow.

Public systems must carry what they were created to carry. Health. Education. Protection. Not in theory. In practice.

Financial systems must move beyond survival lending. Group performance is evidence. It should unlock larger capital.

Programmes must stop using groups as channels and start strengthening them as institutions.

This is not complex. It is alignment.

The question that remains

She meets her group every week. She contributes coins. She borrows when she must. She repays.

She pays taxes on everything she buys and sells.

The state takes. The group feeds.

The state extracts. The group supports.

The state fails. The group absorbs.

Now the state arrives again. It wants to use her group. To deliver. To count. To report.

She will accept. She needs the money.

But she knows the difference.

The question is not whether women can organise. They already have.

The question is why they must.

Why does the state that takes her taxes give nothing back.

Why must she fund her own survival while funding the system.

Why does every level of society feed itself because the tax system feeds no one.

The state takes their taxes. Their groups feed each other.

The question is whether the state will ever stop taking and start giving.

She cannot prove she exists when she needs a loan. Her payments leave no trace. The next article examines what it means to have no record—and what changes when contribution is recognised.