Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), Gujarat, India

Gujarat is an arid and semi-arid state in the northwest of India and has been frequently hit by climatic crises. The primary challenges in Gujarat are to enhance literacy rates, especially among rural women, and to reduce the risks to the rural poor resulting from crises (particularly climatic crises).  SEWA is a registered trade union with a remit to ‘organise women workers for full employment’. Through its integrated approach to employment and self-reliance, workers can obtain work, income, food and social security. The organisation now has 966,139 members across nine states in India, with the majority (519,309) living in Gujarat.  It currently runs nine campaigns (home-based workers, vendors, clean Ahmedabad, water, forest workers, health workers, childcare, informal economy and agriculture).  Like all the interventions studied, SEWA has taken a self-help group (SHG) approach to women’s empowerment.

Interviews and group discussions were held with groups from the villages of Ganeshpura, Vasna Mota and Visavdi.