SEWA is a trade union registered in 1972. It's founder is Elaben Bhatt. It is an organization of poor, self-employed women workers. These are women who earn a living through their own labour or small businesses. They do not obtain regular salaried employment with welfare benefits like workers in the organised sector. They are the unprotected labour force of our country, constituting 93% of the labour force. Of the female labour force in India, more than 94% are in this unorganised sector, currently termed ' the informal economy'. Their work is not counted and hence remains invisible. In fact, women workers themselves remain uncounted and invisible.

Self-Employed Women Workers – Our Members

These are workers of the informal economy who have no fixed employee-employer relationships and depend on their own labour for survival. They are poor, illiterate and vulnerable. They barely have any assets or working capital. But they are extremely active economically, contributing very significantly to the economy and society with their labour. In fact, 64% of GDP is accounted for by the self-employed of our country.

There are four types of self-employed workers :

• Hawkers and vendors of items such as vegetables, fruit, fish, food items, household goods and clothes.

• Home-based workers like weavers, beedi and agarbatti workers, papad rollers, ready-made garment workers, women who process agricultural products and artisans.

• Manual labourers and service providers like agricultural labourers, construction workers, contract labourers, handcart pullers, head-loaders, domestic workers and laundry workers.

• Small producers like gum collectors, embroiderers and salt producers.

SEWA’s main goals are to organise women workers for full employment and self reliance. Full employment means employment whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security and social security ( health care, child care, insurance and shelter). SEWA organised women to ensure that every family obtains full employment. By self-reliance we mean that women should be autonomous and self-reliant, individually and collectively, both economically and in terms of their decision-making ability.

At SEWA we organise workers to achieve their goals of full employment and self reliance through the strategy of struggle and development. The struggle is against the many constraints and limitations imposed on them by society and the economy, while development activities strengthen women’s bargaining power and offer them new alternatives. Practically, the strategy is carried out through the joint action of union and cooperatives. Gandhian thinking is the guiding force for SEWA’s poor self employed members in organising for social change. We follow the principles of satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integrating all faiths, all people) and khadi (propagation of local employment and self reliance)

SEWA is both an organisation and a movement. The SEWA movement is enhanced by its being a `sangam’ or confluence of three movements: the labour movement, the cooperative movement and the women’s movement. But it is also a movement of self-employed workers—their own, home-grown movement with the women as leaders. Through their own movement women become strong and visible. Their tremendous economic and social contribution becomes recognised.

For more information kindly visit www.sewa.org .