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Ms. Lyla Abdul Latif
Volume 4 Issue 2 | Dec 2021
DOI: 10.31841/KJSSH.2022.44
Views: 627
Total Downloads: 27
Unpaid care work and working in the informal sector have restricted women’s access to finance. These money restrictions are partly because of cultural barriers framing gender roles and institutions structured towards a service economy that is representative of women. Also, the market’s emphasis on minimum state intervention and freedom of trade and capital has steered redistribution away from addressing gender-related socioeconomic inequalities. Redistribution has instead been fostered to stimulate the growth of private markets and provide entrepreneurs with a path for socio-economic mobility. It has created gendered wealth and income asymmetries and deepened gender inequalities in accessing finance. Can fintech, arguably the next iteration of development models, bridge this inequality gap? Should tax justice continue to be construed from a public finance perspective where taxes collected are not always used to provide commensurate public benefits to citizens? Or can tax justice be purposively construed to include religious tax practises inspired by an exogenous, religiously inspired fiscal system, for example, Islam? Relatedly, can Muslim non-state actors also be subservient to the exogenous Islamic fiscal system and facilitate redistribution using the available religious funds transmitted through fintech? Redistributive taking under the Islamic fiscal system as part of the collective consciousness of the Muslim community should be analysed as part of the conceptual framework that explains what tax justice means. This paper attempts to explore how the concept of redistribution can be examined using the Islamic wealth tax. It will explain how a faith-based organisation in Nairobi uses the Islamic wealth tax to meet the development needs of women looking for financial access to improve their economic well-being. Keywords: Economic development, Kenya, Redistribution, Women, Zakat.