Book description
This book is a first-hand account of the vision, rise, and success of SEWA, the Self-Employed Women's Association, a trade union of self-employed women in India. It takes the reader into an up-close look at these women's daily lives, at the forces that overpower them, the conditions that perpetuate their…
Why read it?
1 author picked We Are Poor but So Many as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Ela Bhatt, a former Member of the Indian parliament, chronicles the astonishing rise of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) ,which she helped form in 1972.
The overwhelming majority of the labor force in India is self-employed and the majority of the self-employed are women. Today SEWA works in 18 Indian states and is made up of 2.1 million informal women workers — the single largest union of informal sector workers in the world.
In this first-hand account, Bhatt shows how the organization struggled against cultural norms, the state, and formal unions, and challenged the rise of Hindu nationalism as it…
From Aili's list on The best books on the economy as if people mattered.
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