David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog

I'd heard about the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and its founder Ela Bhatt, but I'd never really understood what it and she achieved. SEWA began in the Indian state of Gujarat in 1972 as a trade union for self-employed women, whom we today call microentrepreneurs or informal workers. Yet its members neither share a common trade nor have employers to strike against, making for a peculiar sort of trade union (in my eyes). SEWA started its own bank in 1974 and an insurance program called Vimo SEWA in 1992.