Self Employed Women's Association

Self Employed Women's Association, 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. Nearly 2 million workers are members of SEWA 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. 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. The principles behind accomplishing these goals are struggle and development, meaning negotiating with stakeholders and providing services, respectively.
SEWA was founded in 1972 by labor lawyer and organiser Ela Bhatt. It emerged from the Women's Wing of the Textile Labour Association, a labour union founded by Gandhi in 1918. The organisation grew very quickly, with 30,000 members in 1996, to 318,527 in 2000, to 1,919,676 in 2013., and nearly 2 million in 2023. Even before the 2008 financial crisis, over 90% of India's working population was in the informal sector, and 94% of working women in 2009 worked in the informal sector. India's history and patriarchal systems also contributes to this disparity because traditional gender roles exclude women from regular, secure forms of labour.

History

TLA and Gandhian roots

SEWA originated in 1972 as the Association's Women's Wing of Textile Labour Association, which was established by Gandhi in 1918. SEWA is located in Ahmedabad, India, the city where Gandhi's ashram still exists and once served to facilitate much of the Mahatma's work. Gandhi's ethos of collective mobilization led to the founding of TLA, which is a labour union generally concerned with textile labourers in the formal sector. Around the era of SEWA's establishment, Ahmedabad youths were enthusiastic to interact with the poor because of Gandhi's legacy in the city. While not explicitly stated, low-income labourers in the formal sector are more likely to be men because of cultural practice putting men in positions of security and higher status. There were no unions protecting individuals who worked outside the formal sector, which tended to be women. As a young lawyer for TLA in the 1970s, Bhatt saw these women outside textile factories and created a department within the Women's Wing of TLA specifically devoted to women in the informal economy.
Gender discrimination was apparent in TLA, whose leading figures were all male during the time of SEWA's involvement in the organization.
Despite the rift between TLA and SEWA, there are clear influences of the Mahatma in SEWA's principles of truth, non-violence, and integration of all people that shape the organization to be so successful. Driving SEWA's every decision are satya, ahimsa, sarvadharma and khadi, which all helped Gandhi organize poor people in the Indian independence movement.

Ela Bhatt

In 1972, SEWA materialized first as a collective of women that worked outside the textile mills and other formalized sources of income—individuals not targeted by TLA. An early survey of SEWA members found that 97% lived in slums, 93% were illiterate, the average member had four children, and one in three were the primary bread-winner. Its first large project was the SEWA Cooperative Bank, established in 1974 to provide loans to low-income members.Behind all these accomplishments was SEWA's founder Ela Bhatt. Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad on 7 September 1933 to a Brahman caste family of lawyers and was, herself, a lawyer for TLA beginning in the early 1950s. Bhatt found that poor women in Ahmedabad were not just domestic workers, but conducted a variety of businesses at home—as hawkers, street vendors, construction labourers—and were not being represented in India's economy. Incredibly enough, 94% of Indian working women were self-employed in 2009, yet it took until 1972 for any sort of informal labour union to form. The former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw Elaben Bhatt as one of her role models. Hillary visited SEWA first in 1995. In one of her speeches, she described Elaben as soft-spoken and a visionary leader.

Recent history

In June 2024 a one-of-its-kind insurance policy has started making payouts to tens of thousands of women across India to help them cope with the impact of extreme heat. This policy covers 50,000 women in 22 districts across the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.

Tools for struggle and development

Organizing model

SEWA goes beyond being a labour union and additionally acts as a meeting point for poor, Indian women who are regularly marginalized across rural landscapes and isolated to urban slums. The model has spread from Ahmedabad to other parts of Gujarat as well as to other Indian states as part of the larger federation SEWA Bharat. SEWA's organizing model brings together women across castes and class who share experiences of labour exploitation. A survey of SEWA members show that its women achieve the goals of full employment and self-reliance through interpersonal recognition that also has been shown to increase productivity within the organization. SEWA also connects workers in the same business within over 50 cooperatives. SEWA serves as a model for successful bottom-up democratic organizations by emphasizing an organizational model.
Steps to organizing such a large union are outlined as follows:

Recruit members and assess needs of this unique cohort
Group members by trade, cooperative, region, etc.
Foster leadership within groups
Train leaders to promote SEWA programs either locally or within their profession
Elect members to positions of SEWA leadership councils
Economic tools

SEWA established its own bank in 1974 called the Shri Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank, or SEWA Cooperative Bank, as a way to circumvent corrupt banks, moneylenders, and other middlemen. Everything about the bank is determined by SEWA members—the bankers and board members are organization members, the loan rates are set by members, the funds are entirely from members. SEWA Bank's philosophy is centered around saving and entrepreneurship, especially considering SEWA members have stock in the bank. SEWA gives microcredit, or microfinance, to members through its bank, which is considered by many to increase micro and macro productivity by lending to individuals to pursue a business, finance a home, and various other ways to establish one's self. Women have become a central demographic within microfinance because they are understood to be the most socially vulnerable population within poverty-stricken communities and also tend to generate wealth for the whole family rather than as an individual.
A large body of literature exists that critiques the merits of microcredit. Many argue that microcredits are indeed effective in bringing women into a liberated economy; however, the capitalist system women are introduced to is deeply violent and institutionally sexist. Mahajan argues that microcredit does nothing to promote economic growth for a nation as a whole for reasons that Surowiecki such as microloans stifling innovation and prohibiting job production—in otherwords stagnating business growth at "micro" level instead of "small" business level. Often, microloans simply have a crippling effect on the individual. A study by Jahiruddin of Bangladeshi microloan benefactors found that the poorest entrepreneurs tend to be the most susceptible to business failure and increased debt because they have fewer resources as a safety net. The same study also found that entrepreneurs who reported worsening poverty also are the most dependent on microloans.
Research specific to SEWA Bank complicates the above narrative. A 1999 study by Chen and Snodgrass found that SEWA members using the microloan program experienced an increase in income and could more easily find gainful employment. Another study by Bhatt and Bhatt found that women in the program also find more self-esteem and confidence to conduct business. One reason for these differing experiences could be that SEWA provides both monetary support and financial guidance that other microloan programs do not. These individual experiences, however, do not speak to the deleterious macroeconomic implications of microloans.
Other economic tools used by SEWA include guidance in savings, insurance, housing, social security, pensions, fundamentals of personal finance, and counseling.

Governmental tools

As one of the largest organizations in India, SEWA uses its huge political influence in lobbying for various causes. They fight to incorporate the informal sector into national economic statistics and economic policies, as well as the provision of social securities, because their members do not have employers to provide insurance, healthcare, childcare, etc. In fact, women who work in the informal economy are often subject to police harassment because street vending is illegal, which provokes unnecessary force from law enforcement. SEWA educates street vendors on how to apply for permits and work within the justice system. In addition to protecting the rights of its members, SEWA is a loud voice in human rights for India in general. During the peak of Muslim–Hindu tension in the early 21st century, SEWA acted as a peacekeeper because of its nature as a bridge between the two religions, between castes, and between classes.

Action oriented research

SEWA Academy is a branch that conducts credible research on a range of subjects from childcare, to health reform, to professional experiences, and many other issues of importance to the organization. The method of research is variegated, too, from self-evaluation to surveys. In doing so, SEWA can assess its programming efficacy and determine what issues are most pressing for members. As a grassroots organization, SEWA researchers are members that undergo research training that thus provides another skill and connects women to education. Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, a sister group co-founded by Elaban Bhatt, produces extensive research on self-employed women at the global scale. WIEGO is within the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, a department of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Several studies are co-authored by SEWA and WIEGO.