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SEWA - About Us
Introduction
SEWA
is a trade union registered in 1972. It is an organisation 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, these are workers of the unorganised sector. Of the female labour
force in India, more than 94% are in the unorganised sector. However their work is not
counted and hence remains invisible. In fact, women workers themselves remain uncounted,
undercounted and invisible.
SEWA’s main goals
are to organise women workers for full employment. Full employment means employment
whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security and social security
(at least health care, child care and shelter). SEWA organises 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 women as the leaders. Through their own movement women become
strong and visible. Their tremendous economic and social contributions become recognised.
With globalization, liberalization and
other economic changes, there are both new opporunities as well as threats to some
traditional areas of employment.
More than ever, our
members are ready to face the winds of change. They know that they must organise to build
their own strength and to meet challenges. There are still millions of women who remain in
poverty and are exploited, despite their long hours of hard labour. They bear the brunt of
the changes in our country and must be brought into the mainstream, so as to avail of the
new opportunities that are developing with regard to employment.
Also there is much to be
done in terms of strengthening women’s leadership, their confidence, their bargaining
power within and outside their homes and their representation in policy-making and
decision-making fora. It is their issues, their priorities and needs which should guide
and mould the development process in our country. Toward this end, SEWA has been
supporting its members in capacity-builiding and in developing their own economic
organisations.
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