For informal women workers, markers are rarely neutral spaces. Prices are often set elsewhere, relationships are uneven, and risk is frequently borne by producers themselves. For WCEs, sustaining an enterprise depends not only on access to buyers, but on how markets are structured and who holds control within them.
SEWA Cooperative Federation works with WCEs to strengthen their engagement with markets over time. This includes supporting readiness, facilitating relationships, and navigating institutional requirements that often exclude informal producers.
Our role is not to manage sales, but to help create conditions where informal women worker cooperatives can participate with greater confidence and continuity, as their capacities and contexts evolve.
Market engagement at the Federation has developed through decades of experience with WCEs across sectors. Over time, it has become clear that access alone is insufficient. Market pathways need to absorb fluctuation, respond to external shocks, and remain workable for women-led enterprises.
In agricultural cooperatives, this engagement often takes decentralised forms. Through models such as Krishi Suvidha Kendras (KSKs), women farmers collectively manage access to inputs and services closer to their villages. These locally run centres reduce dependence on distant markets, support timely decision-making, and strengthen women’s control over how and when they engage with agricultural markets.
Established in 1999, Shop No. 40 in Ahmedabad’s APMC was created as a women-run vegetable shop to enable direct engagement between women farmers and urban consumers. Over the years, it has functioned as a site of learning around access, perception, and control within local markets.
