Priyanka Arora
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is a
national level trade union dedicated to the informal women workers of India. The
organisation has contributed immensely to various facets of the Women’s
movement such as to the labour movement, cooperative movement, women’s movement
in general and more specifically to that of self-employed women and health
movement in India and abroad. The paper aims to throw light on the
socio-economic activities undertaken by SEWA at the grass-root level to make
women self-employed, self- reliant, self-diligent and self-dependent in the
Banaskantha district of Gujarat. It delineates SEWA’s initiatives in generating
alternative sources of employment for women which are being made available to
the region where there are hostile climatic conditions, acute scarcity of
water, increased migration, limited access to capital and also limited employment
opportunities. The organization’s initiative in the rural organizing process
with its need-based integrated approach towards empowerment has transformed the
lives of rural women of Gujarat particularly in the district of Banaskantha.
The SEWA entities are democratic, self-managed and sustainable in terms of
their functioning and work on the principle of full employment and self-reliance
to produce individual and collective empowerment. It is both a union and a
movement -A national, and now increasingly, a global movement of informal women
workers, organizing for their rights, for recognition and inclusion in national
plans, programmes and legislation.
Informal, Women, Banaskantha, SEWA, empowerment,
movement
VOL.14, ISSUE No.1, March 2022