The history of the Gujarat State Women’s SEWA Cooperative Federation is rooted in SEWA’s dual strategy of struggle and development. Since SEWA’s inception as a trade union in 1972, its members – marginalised, self-employed women workers in the informal economy – have fought for their rights and recognition (struggle), while simultaneously building their own alternative institutions for livelihoods and social security (development).
Out of this dual approach grew the cooperative movement within SEWA. Informal women workers across diverse trades began organizing themselves into cooperatives. These cooperatives created fair and dignified employment and also addressed women’s specific needs for sustainable livelihoods, collective bargaining power, and access to markets and capital.
By the early 1990s, it became clear that while each cooperative was rooted in its own trade, they all faced common challenges: managerial capacity, financial sustainability, and access to larger markets. In April 1992, more than 900 women leaders from SEWA cooperatives came together in Ahmedabad to present these issues to the Union Minister of Cooperatives. Their demand was clear: women-led cooperatives needed a collective institution of their own to strengthen, support, and sustain them.
Thus, on 31st December 1992, the Gujarat State Women’s SEWA Cooperative Federation was born – the first women’s cooperative federation in India.
Since then, the Federation has carried forward SEWA’s values of integrity, social justice, communal harmony, and simplicity. It has worked to empower women’s cooperatives not just as economic enterprises but also as vehicles of social change – embodying SEWA’s vision of “struggle and development” for informal women workers’ full employment and self-reliance.
Today, with over 32 years of collective action, SCF continues to build a strong ecosystem for women’s cooperatives.
Holistic empowerment of informal and self-employed women workers, within collectives and co-operatives.
To work with collectives that are run by, with, and for informal women workers to help them achieve full employment and self-reliance at the collective and the member level.
