S E W A
The Self-Employed Women's Association of India
Self Employed Women's Workers
Self Employed Women's Workers are those who earn a loving through their own small business or through their own labour. They do not obrain regular salaried employment like workers in the organised sector.
Self-employed women workers are very poor. They rarely have assets or working capital. All they have are the knowledge and skills of their traditional occupation and their own hard labour.
There are three types of Self Employed Women's Workers:
- Hawkers and vendors who sell their wares from carts, baskets or small shops. They sell vegetables, fish, fruit, eggs, eatables, household goods, ready-made clothes and other items.
- Home based workers like weavers, potters, bidi, agarbatti and papad rollers, garment makers, processors or various types of agricultural produce and crafts women.
- Manual labour and sevice providers like agricultural labourers, construction workers, contract labours, head loaders, cart pullers, laundry and domestic workers.
* Today more than 93% of all workers in India are these type of self-employed workers. Women constitute more than half of the self-employed. Because women's "work" is not considered to be "employment", the actual number of women workers is not known.
