Self-Employed Women's Association

The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) is a trade union based in India of women who work informally (outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship). SEWA was founded in 1972 by Ela Bhatt and a small group of women whose unique needs as poor, female, informal textile workers were not being met by conventional labor unions. Since that time, SEWA s membership has grown to include approximately 800,000 poor women, representing a variety of castes and ethnic groups. These women work in a number of different occupations, including agriculture, street vending, home-based work, manual labor, service provision, [Page 741]and small-scale production. SEWA's primary goals are full employment and self-reliance of its members. SEWA views itself as both an organization and a movement for social change, drawing on Gandhian principles and situating its efforts at the intersection of the labor movement, the cooperative movement, and the women's movement.

SEWA believes that local-level organizing by its members is the primary way to alleviate poverty and achieve development. As a result, SEWA members are organized locally into workers' cooperatives, producers groups, rural savings and credit groups, and social security groups. Although many of these groups are organized by occupation, they also address other issues, including education, housing, health care, child care, and violence against women. Although SEWA is identified as a trade union, the organization recognizes that women's economic needs cannot be separated from other aspects of their lives; SEWA thus functions similarly to a grassroots organization that addresses women's needs in a variety of areas.

Recognizing that local organizing is necessary but not sufficient for poor women's empowerment, SEWA functions at the state and national levels to provide access for its members to markets, training, technical inputs, and policy making. At the national level, SEWA also works with paraprofessionals and trained members in the areas of capacity-building, communications, research, and leadership training. Additionally, SEWA runs a bank that provides access to savings and credit for its members, who, because of their poverty, employment status, and illiteracy, have traditionally been unable to access these services in other ways. One of the important organizing principles of SEWA is member participation, so it is staffed and run at all levels by women who are members of the organization and have been trained for leadership positions. SEWA is democratic in its organizational structure, such that local groups elect village representatives, who elect district representatives, and so forth.

SEWA's participatory approach to promoting women's empowerment, its focus on self-reliance, its ability to meet needs through local organization, and its incorporation of women from a variety of backgrounds, have all resulted in it being widely recognized as a model of a successful grassroots women's development program