Women as the Leaders of Development
Renana Jhabvala
Coordinator and Member, Executive Committee
Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
Ahmedabad, India

October 5, 1998

The most popular pictures presented about women of South Asia are those of victims. They are the victims of fundamentalist societies, forced into purdah or sati. They are the victims of underdevelopment and poverty-low life expectancy, high illiteracy. They are the victims of violence, of discrimination. These images of the victim, helpless South Asian women are highlighted by the media and reinforced by academia.

There is, however, another side to women in South Asia. Most women in South Asia work. They are producers, workers, entrepreneurs contributing to the family and to the economy. They work in their family farms, as agricultural labor in other people’s farms, in forests collecting minor produce, as construction workers, as street vendors, as artisans, as factory workers, as livestock tenders-the list is endless. In India, 92% of employment is in the informal sector, where there is no fixed employer-employee relationship, and nearly 50% of these workers are women. These workers, both men and women, contribute 64% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and nearly 70% of the country’s savings.

These women are not only active in the economy but they continually try to improve their position. They are not the submissive, silent sufferers projected by the media, but active players, trying to control their own destiny, within the limitations they face.

Radhaben lives in a slum in Ahmedabad. She was born in a village 50 kms away and married at the age of 15. She and her husband worked as agricultural laborers but found it difficult to make ends meet. So, on her initiative, they migrated to Ahmedabad. “I had only Rs. 5 in my pocket,” she recalls. First she worked as a construction worker, then someone taught her how to sew and she would sew and sell old clothes. “We had many struggles, so many obstacles, sometimes I felt like committing suicide. But I kept on trying. I could educate my children and today we have our own house. I believe in hard work, whatever happens I keep on working.”

The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)

SEWA is a trade union registered in 1972. It is an organization of poor, self-employed women workers. These are women who earn a living through their own labor or small businesses. They do not obtain regular salaried employment with welfare benefits like workers in the organized sector. They are the unprotected labor force of our country.

SEWA’s main goals are to organize women workers for full employment and self-reliance. 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 organizes 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 organize 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 organizing 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 organization and a movement. The SEWA movement is enhanced by its being a “sangam” or confluence of three movements: the labor 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 contribution becomes recognized.

A woman becomes a SEWA member by paying a yearly membership fee. In 1997, there were 215,000 members of SEWA.

Promoting Women’s Own Economic Organizations

SEWA believes that the basis of development and progress is organization. Self-employed women must organize themselves into sustainable organizations so that they can collectively promote their own development.

These organizations, the women’s own organizations, have many different purposes. They can be trade organizations which promote employment, increase income or link the women workers/producers with the market. They can be organizations which build assets through savings and credit, such as the Bank. They can be organizations which provide social security, such as health care or child care. They can be organizations which promote the cause of, and advocate for, poor women.

They can be organizations at the village level, at the district level, at the State level, at the National or International level. They can be registered as Cooperatives, Societies, Producer Associations or even remain unregistered. Their members may be self-employed women directly, or primary organizations of self-employed women.

SEWA has helped its members to form their own organizations. These organizations have all the following characteristics:

• They exist for the benefit of the self-employed women members of SEWA
• They are owned by the self-employed women
• They are managed by them
• They are democratically run
• They aim towards self-reliance, financially and managerial.

Given SEWA’s emphasis on employment and income, most of the organizations are trade- or occupation-based. They are poor women’s own economic organizations. The members of these organizations own these through shares or control of working capital and other resources. They directly benefit from their own organizations. Some of the organizations are registered under the Cooperatives Act, and some are DWCRA groups (producers groups) registered with the Ministry of Rural Development. All these economic organizations are smaller primary groups, village level or mohalla (neighborhood) level based, and all are independent, autonomous bodies. They include:

Cooperatives of milk producers, artisans, agriculturists and forest producers, salt makers, vendors, cleaners, as well as service cooperatives of banking, savings and credit, health, childcare. A total of 80 cooperatives, with 65,000 members. Producer (DWCRA) groups of artisans, agriculturists and forest produce gatherers, nursery growers as well as groups providing food security and consumer services. A total of 1177 groups with 90,000 members.

Savings and Credit Organizations include SEWA Bank as well as Associations at the district level. At present there are over 100,000 women with savings in these organizations.

The economic organizations described above are all primary organizations, serving the self-employed women directly. However, organizing at the primary or grass-roots level is necessary, but not enough. Access to markets, to training, to technical inputs and to policy making requires organizations which can deal at State, National and International levels. The primary purpose of these organizations is to link the self-employed women, through their primary organizations, to the larger economic structures; and in doing so, to mainstream them into the economy. These federations include: Gujarat State Mahila SEWA Cooperatives Federation, Banaskantha DWCRA Mahila SEWA Association (BDMSA), Kutch Craft Association, Surendranagar Bal Vikas (Child Development) Mandal, Sukhi Mahila Mandal, Sabarkantha Khedu (farmers) Mandal, Anasuya Trust (for communications), Gujarat Mahila Housing Trust.


Mobilization Through Campaigns

While organizing women and supporting them in building their own workers’ organizations, the need for mass mobilization through campaigns becomes evident. This mass mobilization strengthens the SEWA movement and at the same time highlights their own pressing issues.

All mobilization is done as part of a campaign around a clearly identified issue. The issue is identified by the women and local leaders as one which affects large numbers of people, which affects them deeply or is felt as unjust or intolerable, and which continually is called to our attention. Mobilization involves continuous meetings at the village or mohalla level. The meetings must include as large a representation as possible, for example an all-village meeting-“gram sabha.” Several campaigns propelled the SEWA movement forward in 1997.

Home-based Workers Campaign: A campaign started at SEWA more than two decades ago reached its peak at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1996. A historic victory for home-based workers worldwide was won when the ILO voted for a Convention to address the needs and priorities of home-based workers everywhere, according them full rights as workers.

The Water Campaign: The areas of North Gujarat where SEWA works are mainly arid and semi-arid. Safe drinking water is a major problem, as is water for irrigation, and so both living conditions and the economy remain depressed in these areas. In 1995, SEWA’s local leaders organized gram sabhas in 290 villages. The response was overwhelming with villagers coming together to identify their major problem an acute shortage of water. The villagers have been responding to SEWA members with great enthusiasm, and in some areas results are already visible, with water tankers being provided in some villages, repair works beginning in others and new water resources provided in a few. In 1997 too, this Campaign was carried forward by women leaders.

The Food Security Campaign: The second major problem identified in the gram sabhas is the unavailability of food grains. Most of the villages, and especially the poor, rely on the ration shops for their food needs; most villages do not have their own ration shop but have to rely on those 3-4 kilometers away. Even there, as the villagers say, “Whenever we go there is a shortage of all items, rains, sugar, oil, kerosene.” In the campaign for adequate coverage of ration shops, adequate supply in them and alternatives to the ration shops, village women flood the civil supplies authorities demanding adequate and timely supplies, ration cards and the kind of supplies they require.

Vendors Campaign: Vendors are an important part of the urban distribution system, yet they are treated as criminals. SEWA took the campaign for “Legal Rights for Street Vendors in Our Cities” to the international arena, with a meeting of vendors of 11 mega cities of the world organized in Bellagio, Italy. The meeting resulted in an International Declaration demanding policy and space for vendors.

Clean Ahmedabad Campaign: Increasingly people are becoming aware of the lack of clean surroundings in our cities and its health consequences. The poor, in the slums especially, face piling of garbage, filthy and insufficient number of toilets, overflowing drains, stagnant pools and polluted drinking water, which spread disease and make their lives miserable of all. The public authorities alone are unable to handle the huge problems of the cities, and this has given rise to the “Clean Ahmedabad” campaign involving SEWA members especially the paper and rag pickers, industry, and middle class colonies. Clean Ahmedabad Campaign won a major national award, the FICCI Award (given by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

Campaign for Forest Workers: Women have been forest and nursery workers and collectors of minor forest produce for years. However, they have not received the technical support and services that they require. On the other hand, it is they who are the worst sufferers in the increasing ecological degeneration and land degradation at the local level. In addition, some policies of the government’s Forest Department, including their own nursery-raising, are an impediment to women’s employment. These policies are not only hindrance but also result in declining incomes of the poorest of women who depend on forest and nursery-raising for survival. In this context, SEWA has initiated a national and state level campaign to feminize our forests.

Campaign for Recognition of Dais (Traditional Birth Attendants): Dais or Traditional Birth Attendants have been conducting home deliveries in Gujarat’s villages for centuries. They also provide general primary health services to families. Yet they remain unrecognized by the government’s Health Department and society in general. They neither get the respect that is their due nor do they play any significant role in the government health system. SEWA has been demanding that the dais be registered, given identity cards and be responsibility for providing decentralized health care at women’s doorsteps in the villages.

Campaign for Child Care as a Basic Service: For poor working women, child care is a priority and basic need. Our experience has been that when appropriate and affordable child care is organized for workers, they can earn and their productivity increases. Enhanced income brings in better food, nutrition and health to women’s families, as they can now spend on these needs. They also report “peace of mind,” knowing that their children are being taken care of properly. Finally, workers’ older children are released from child care responsibilities and start attending school. For all these reasons, SEWA has been campaigning for child care as an entitlement for all women workers for some years now.

The Ten Questions of SEWA

1. Have more members obtained more employment?
2. Has their income increased?
3. Have they obtained food and nutrition?
4. Has their health been safeguarded?
5. Have they obtained child care?
6. Have they obtained or improved their housing?
7. Have their assets increased? (like their own savings, land, house, work-space, tools of work, licenses, identity cards, cattle and share in cooperatives, and all in their own name)
8. Has the workers’ organizational strength increased?
9. Has worker leadership increased?
10. Have they become self-reliant both collectively and individually?

Women as the Leaders of Development

Given the popular media image of the submissive, suffering South Asian woman, they are rarely seen as leaders. And yet the main anti-poverty development initiatives in the last two decades have been led by women.

The most successful and large NGOs have mainly women as their members or clients. This is true across the subcontinent from Bangladesh through India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. NGOs find that women are more sincere, less likely to get involved in politics which destroy an organization and tend to provide an honest and unselfish leadership.

Micro-finance and micro-credit has become one of the main developmental initiatives around the world. Here too the lead has been taken by women, the rural women, the poorest women. In their initial years, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, the best known of all micro-credit organizations, started with only 5% of their clients as women; today 85% are women.

The environment movement too has been led by the rural women. In India, the women started the Chipko movement and saved the trees. In deserts, in forests, near dams around the region women take the lead in saving their environment.

We do believe that given a chance the poor women of our region can be the leaders of development.

Puriben Vaghabhai Ahir is a resident of Vauva village of Shantalpur taluka. Women have to spend hours to get water in this district area. Puriben was the first to organize the villages for water. With the help of SEWA, she started water-related programs in villages and also health care and education. Though illiterate herself, with the support of women, she approached taluka and district offices and presented before them the fundamental problems of her village people like water, lack of nutrition food and health care. When the Sarpanch (head of village council) of her village and other male members refused to include any women in watershed committee, she dared to register her opposition and said, “Women must be in the committee.”

Menaben resides in Lodra village near the desert. This village was constantly under the fear of becoming a desert itself. But the same village has now stopped the advancement of the desert. How has this happened? Six years ago, under the leadership of Menaben, programs such as nursery and rearing of trees were undertaken to improve their village environment. Menaben received technical training in this field and involved the women of neighbouring in an eco-regeneration programme to improve the village environment of her region. As a result, not only was desertification stopped, but also a stable source of income was created for many villagers.

Organizing Towards Empowerment

Organizing is the key to empowerment. Organizing is the process by which people who are individually weak and vulnerable unite and create power together. When individuals who are among the poorest, least educated and most disenfranchised members of society come together they experience dramatic changes in their lives. First they gain knowledge. This includes information about their rights and obligations as economic actors, about health and education for their families, about finance-credit and savings, about the resources available in society, about their political choices. Second, they gain self-esteem. They realize they have the ability to improve themselves and their family and that they gain respect both inside and outside the family. Third, they gain a sense of community. They find that they are offered support from people with common problems, common perceptions and common values.

Organizing alters a person’s way of thinking, seeing and feeling. But it also alters the material conditions of a person’s life. Producers with less capital can pool together and buy raw materials at wholesale prices. Individual farmers who are unable to enter markets individually, can do so collectively. Poor women putting together their savings can build a SEWA Bank. Landless laborers can become collective owners of land. A woman’s group in a village can run a school, an anganvadi or a health centre.

Organizing increases bargaining power and gives voice to the voiceless. Often even the poorest women who have organized say, “Now people listen to me.” Increase of bargaining power is the basis of trade unions. For daily laborers, home-based workers, contract labor, it can increase the daily earnings of the workers. It can make their working conditions more secure. For the self-employed, organizing will increase their bargaining power with respect to prices and conditions. For social sector services, only organizing will begin to enforce accountability on the teachers, the health providers, the agricultural extension workers, etc. Organizing is the only way that the weak and powerless can make their voice heard at the policy level. It is through organizing that policies can be changed, that new laws can be brought in, that the powerless can be given representation in policymaking forums.

Organizing the poor generally has two aspects and both are crucial for success. The first is a struggle over a specific cause or issue, which vitally affects the interests of the people. This may be the struggle of village women to get a Health Center. It may be the struggle to ensure water for the village. It may be a struggle of agricultural laborers over higher wages, or of street vendors to secure licenses. This aspect of the organizing is short-lived, reaching its peak at certain times and tapering off at others, but at its height it is a major force for change. It creates an external atmosphere for the issue, at the same time creates dramatic internal changes in the participants and often throws up new leaders. The second aspect of organizing is program-based. It ensures that the organizing efforts continue into the future, for a longer time period. This development-oriented organizing is usually for building new structures, for running and managing programs and can slowly grow to encompass more and more aspects. It could include building and/or managing a water system, forming a cooperative or a savings and credit scheme, running a health or child care center, taking joint responsibility for forests. Although less dramatic than the struggle-oriented aspect, it ensures a slow and steady building of persons, institutions and change in relations.

Renana Jhabvala is Coordinator and Member, Executive Committee, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in Ahmedabad, India.