The SEWA Movement is committed to two main goals: Full Employment at the household level and Self Reliance for our members.

Full Employment refers to employment that not only provides job security and adequate income and food. Rather, it also provides workers with social security such as basic healthcare, childcare, insurance and shelter for themselves and their families.

Self Reliance refers to both individual and collective strength, at the economic, social, political and intellectual levels.

Achieving these two goals will not only increase the bargaining power of women workers in the informal economy, but will also ensure that these women have control over the decision-making processes across all dimensions of their lives.

SEWA organising Strategy

To achieve these goals, SEWA organises women through the joint strategy of Struggle and Development.

Our women members face numerous constraints and injustices in their homes, markets and communities. Our members must struggle for visibility and recognition, and to assume their rightful place in the economy. This may occur at the local, regional, national or even international level. Their leadership and input must be acknowledged in economic, social and political spheres, so that policies and practices reflect concern for the interests of women workers in the informal economy.

Simultaneously, the initial development activities allows women workers to augment their bargaining power and offers them alternatives for enhancing their incomes and social security through collective action. This can take the form of building membership-based organisations and capacity building training programs in various activities such as financial services, healthcare, childcare, housing, insurance, and employment generation programs among others.

Practically, SEWA implements this strategy through the joint action of Unions and Co-operatives, two democratic forms of organisation that can be owned, controlled and run by the workers themselves.

Through the union, SEWA members fight for their rights and against the various injustices that they face in their lives. They also use the union to build a mass movement of works that links the local and the international issues that affect the everyday concerns of women workers in the unorganised sector. SEWA co-operatives are used to further all of SEWA’s developmental activities. They are run by individual management committees and provide services that address the needs of SEWA members.

These activities are focused on the Eleven Points of SEWA:

SEWA Philosophy

SEWA is inspired by Gandhian thinking and principles of satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integration of all faiths and peoples) and khadi (promotion of local employment).

SEWA Movements

The SEWA organisations are both organisations and a movement. They are, in fact, a sangam (confluence) of three movements: the labour movement, the co-operative movement and the women’s movement. But most significantly, it is a movement of self-employed women in which they themselves are the leaders. This helps women workers to enter the national mainstream and to become strong and visible.

organisation of SEWA members is supplemented by mass mobilization around various campaigns. These campaigns strengthen the SEWA movement by highlighting the crucial issues women workers face in different informal economy activities.

These campaigns have both regional and national foci Include: