SEWA works to achieve full employment for the 94% of Indian women workers who are self-employed

On the banks of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad, India, is a slum, Shankarbhuvan, where about 8,000 women, men and children live. Leelaben Shantilal Bhoi is one of them. About 20 years ago, her husband died of cancer, leaving her with five children all under the age of eight. Ms. Bhoi had sought treatment for him in the government hospital which left her greatly in debt. She worked day and night to care for her family and pay off the debt. Her children added to the family income by carrying buckets of water for other families.

At around the same time, measles broke out and took the lives of several children in the neighbourhood. The slum had no clean running water and sanitation facilities. Residents defecated in the open—in an empty plot nearby or by the river. And women had to get up and go in the dark to preserve their modesty.

Twenty years later, Ms. Bhoi looks back at those days with mixed emotion. While they represent the darkest hour in her life, they were also an opportunity for her to turn her life around. She met SEWA members - a trade union of women workers in the informal economy and who also address health issues - when they came to the slum to help during the outbreak of measles. Through the union, she learned about health and the various diseases, and also taught herself how to read and write. She also organized the immunization of all children in her slum to eliminate measles deaths and polio. Her own youngest son suffered from polio that almost took his life and left him with a limp.

"Now no children die here—all are immunized and we weigh them regularly and conduct check-ups. About half the families have running water and toilets due to our collective efforts and SEWA’s support. We no longer go to the toilet in the open. It is such a relief for us women. But half the community still does not have these facilities because they live right on the river bank and we cannot put pipes there for sanitation and sewage.''

She is a part-time health worker in SEWA’s health cooperative, Lok Swasthya (meaning People’s Health) and augments her income by selling ready-to-eat cooked snacks. She provides health education, low cost medicines and other health activities in her community from the health cooperative.

Ms. Bhoi admits her living conditions are still not good enough to promote social well being for all but says her community is doing what is possible within their social reality. She says people of her area still need running water, toilets in every home and basic sanitation. She is concerned about the health of her community and asks the question that is on the lips of many in her community: "How can we be healthy, if we do not even have the basic amenities?''

SEWA, a trade union registered in 1972, is an organisation of poor, self-employed women workers who earn a living through their own labour or small businesses. Unorganized workers make up 93% of India's labour force, and women make up 94% of these unorganized workers. SEWA's main goals are to organize these uncounted, undercounted and invisible women workers for full employment, meaning employment which brings work security, income security, food security and social security (at least health care, child care and shelter).

Gandhian thinking is the guiding force for SEWA’s poor, self-employed members in organising for social change, following 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, 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 and their tremendous economic and social contributions become recognised.

Supportive services like savings and credit, health care, child car, insurance, legal aid, capacity building and communication services are important needs of poor women and are essential for women to achieve their goals of full employment and self-reliance. SEWA has helped women take a number of initiatives in organizing these services for themselves and their SEWA sisters, including the SEWA Bank and SEWA Academy.

Many important lessons have been learnt in the process of organising these supportive services for and by poor women. These services are provided in a decentralised and affordable manner, at the doorsteps of workers, and can be and are in themselves a source of self-employment. For example, midwives charge for their services and creche workers collect fees for taking care of young children. Women are ready to pay for the services and in fact, this results in the financial viability of the supportive services, so they do not have to be totally dependent on subsidies and grants. Some supportive services like savings and credit, health and child care have formed their own co-operatives which have gained operational self sufficiency. SEWA bank has been financially viable for many years now, while the other cooperatives are steadily moving towards this.

Ms. Bhoi’s story is one of a series of stories told on the website of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, which was launched by the World Health Organization in March 2005, and will complete its initial work in May 2008. Chaired by Sir Michael Marmot of the University College, London, it has twenty Commissioners who are global and national leaders from political, government, civil society and academic fields. The Commission, which is studying policies that improve health by addressing the social conditions which people live and work, supports countries and global health partners to address the social factors leading to ill health and inequities including unemployment, unsafe workplaces, urban slums, globalization and lack of access to health systems. Its research is helping to show the importance of empowerment in health.

 

 

 

 

 


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