Self Employed Women's Association

SEWA
Self-Employed Women's Association of India
Founded1972
HeadquartersAhmedabad
Location
Members
1,916,676 (2013)
Key people
Ela Bhatt, Founder
AffiliationsITUC
Websitewww.sewa.org
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and SEWA Executive Director Reema Nanavaty listen as women artisans share stories of their involvement with SEWA at the Hansiba Store in Mumbai, India, 18 July 2009.
Ela Bhatt, founder and past president of SEWA, appreciating the fabrics at Qalandia Women's Cooperative

Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), meaning "service" in several Indian languages, is a trade union based in Ahmedabad, India, that promotes the rights of low-income, independently employed female workers.[1] Nearly 2 million workers are members of  the Self-Employed Women’s Association across eight states in India. Self-employed women are defined as those who do not have a fixed employer-employee relationship and do not receive a fixed salary and social protection like that of formally-employed workers and therefore have a more precarious income and life.[2] SEWA organises around the goal of full employment in which a woman secures work, income, food, and social security like health care, child care, insurance, pension and shelter.[3] The principles behind accomplishing these goals are struggle and development, meaning negotiating with stakeholders and providing services, respectively.[4][3]

SEWA was founded in 1972 by labor lawyer and organiser Ela Bhatt. It emerged from the Women's Wing of the Textile Labour Association (TLA), a labour union founded by Gandhi in 1918.[5] The organisation grew very quickly, with 30,000 members in 1996, to 318,527 in 2000, to 1,919,676 in 2013.,[2][6] and nearly 2 million in 2023.[7] Even before the financial crisis of 2008, over 90% of India's working population was in the informal sector (Shakuntala 2015), and 94% of working women in 2009 worked in the informal sector (Bhatt 2009).[8][9] India's history and patriarchal systems also contributes to this disparity because traditional gender roles exclude women from regular, secure forms of labour.[10]

  1. ^ Howard Spodek (October 1994). "Review: The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India: Feminist, Gandhian Power in Development". Economic Development and Cultural Change. 43 (1). University of Chicago Press: 193–202. doi:10.1086/452141. JSTOR 1154338. S2CID 155233844.
  2. ^ a b Rekha Datta (Spring 2003). "From Development to Empowerment: The Self-Employed Women's Association in India". International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. 16 (3): 351–368. doi:10.1023/A:1022352227601. JSTOR 20020171. S2CID 140446037.
  3. ^ a b "About Us: Introduction". Self Employed Women's Association.
  4. ^ Martha Chen; Chris Bonner; Françoise Carré (2015). "Organizing Informal Workers: Benefits, Challenges and Successes". UNDP Human Development Report. 2015 UNDP Human Development Report Office: 13.
  5. ^ Spodek, Howard (2011). Ahmedabad: Shock city of the twentieth century India. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 253. ISBN 978-0253355874.
  6. ^ Annual Report (PDF) (Report). Self Employed Women's Association. 2013. p. 4.
  7. ^ Oza, Rupal. The Making of Neoliberal India. pp. 21–44.
  8. ^ Das, Shakuntala (2015). "Growing Informality, Gender Equality and the Role of Fiscal Policy in the Face of the Current Economic Crisis: Evidence from the Indian Economy". International Journal of Political Economy. 44 (4): 277–295. doi:10.1080/08911916.2015.1129846. S2CID 155891885.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Edward Webster (2011). "Organizing in the Informal Economy: Ela Bhatt and the Self-Employed Women's Association of India" (PDF). Labour, Capital and Society. 44 (1): 99–125.