1. Context
Indian agriculture employs almost 60% of the population. The female share in agriculture exceeds those of males, as 72.8 % of women are involved in agriculture activities compared to 48.9% of men (National census report, 2007). Small and marginal farmers account for about 82% of total farmers in the country. For small-scale women farmers, agriculture is often the only source of income. Their economic development is limited by the lack of economic assets, human and social capital, including very low level of literacy among smallholders, particularly women. All these factors lead rural women to be very vulnerable to climatic, agronomic and economic shocks.
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is an Indian membership-based trade union, founded in 1972, in Gujarat State. In 2009, the organization had 1, 256 million members across 9 states with over 50% of its membership in Gujarat. Until 1994, SEWA's members were predominantly from urban areas. This was partly due to its origins and office base in the city of Ahmedabad. However, in the late eighties, SEWA intensified its activities in rural areas, resulting in increased rural membership. In 2009, two third of SEWA’s membership is from the rural areas out of which 54% of the members are engaged in agriculture.
SEWA‘s main goal is to organize women for full employment and self reliance. For SEWA, full employment means employment whereby women obtain work security, income security, food and social security (at least health care, child care and shelter). By self-reliance SEWA means that women might be autonomous and self-reliant, individually and collectively, in terms of their decision-making ability (SEWA annual report, 2008).
2. SEWA’s organizational model
SEWA built a dense network of successful members own organizations through an integrated and comprehensive approach, addressing the numerous constraints that small-scale and marginalized women farmers face. SEWA’s approach includes a set of activities to simultaneously increase farmers’ economic, human and social capital and enable them to overcome poverty and exclusion. In particular, the SEWA model combines:
- Interventions in multiples areas: capacity development, market linkages, as well as financial and support services.
- A gradual and cumulative process over a long period. This process ranges from raising awareness among small and marginalized farmers' about opportunities, to empowering farmers within self-help groups and supporting the institution building process.
SEWA’s organizational model brings women farmers out of isolation. Women are connected to a dense network of social relationships which reduces the risks associated with the change process. These women are organised which brings collective strength and helps in increasing the bargaining power of these women. This brings an identity to the women as workers and they also have a voice and representation. All this brings solidarity.
2.1 Raising awareness and self-confidence: mobilizing small-scale women farmers
The first step to any change process is to raise women farmers’ self-confidence, as change creates uncertainty and instability that are associated with risks. Sometimes, marginalized and small-scale farmers might resist change (risk aversion situation) and hence it is necessary to create an environment in which women farmers understand how they will benefit from change.
SEWA initiated a mass mobilization through the “agriculture campaign” to educate and generate awareness among small-scale and marginal women farmers on technical advancement, inputs requirements, advanced research and marketing trends. SEWA began the process by listening to women, presenting SEWA and raising awareness on existing opportunities.
For example, in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat State - a semi-arid region heavily affected by soil erosion - SEWA supported small-scale women farmers to create a federation of women groups, the Sabarkantha Women Farmer's Association and conducted a watershed conservation campaign in 7 villages. SEWA supported this process along the following steps:
- Door-to-door visits of households in the 7 villages.
- Meetings involving the Panchayat (local government) and the GLDC (Gujarat Land Development Corporation). These meetings gave villagers, for the first time, an opportunity to come together, share their concerns and discuss potential solutions.
- Farmers’ visits to villages where watershed conservation techniques were employed so that farmers could have a first hand exposure to the benefits of these techniques.
Awareness rising has been therefore a major preparatory and fundamental step in promoting a successful self-driven development strategy.
2.2 Empowering small-scale women farmers with self-help groups (SHGs)
Once a relationship of trust has been created and villagers understand the benefit of being members of SEWA, the next step is to support the new members to create self-help groups (SHGs), formed by a limited number of farmers. This helps in establishing strong bonds among the members. In a SEWA SHG farmers choose to join with others to share mutual interests and concerns, and to solve their problems. Strong grass-roots groups are the foundations on which SEWA’s approach is based. In 2010, there are about 2,140 SHG of SEWA with a focus on agriculture development.
a) An action-learning approach
SHG provide a structure that enables small-scale women farmers to encourage and support each other in facing change by identifying common problems and solutions and by establishing a platform for collective problem solving. A SHG is a platform where action towards solving problems initiates. Within groups women identify their own challenges, learn to take decisions and calculate risks. Through the sequences of problem analysis (solution identification – decision), women understand better the underlying mechanisms of “how things work”. Ultimately, this step of exchange and mutual aid is the first milestone to build small producers’ self-confidence and their capacity to drive their own development.
Initially, SEWA had been working with cooperatives. However, the cooperative form of organization has its own limitations. It is a very formal organization and a proper management of co-operative requires registration, maintenance of records, formal elections which is very difficult to maintain for each and every village especially for illiterate women. Also there can be only one cooperative in one village. Having Self Help Groups there can be multiple groups in one trade and multiple trade groups in one village. Also these groups include only the poor women and hence a clear focus on the poor women can be maintained. As against this in the cooperative all the women would be included and the powerful and strong would take away the lead.
b) The grass-root leader as a change agent
The SHG needs a leader whom the other members trust and with whom they can discuss their needs: the grass-root leader, called Aagewaan. She is chosen based on her personal skills, ability and commitment to implement the solutions agreed upon collectively. Together, the SEWA members have come up with the following criteria to select the Aagewan. These criteria are:
- She should be ready to travel to the District Office
- She should be fair and just
- She should be ready to sacrifice her work, give time, spend money
- Should be bold, understanding
- It will be good if she is slightly educated
- She should be able to speak up in front of any guest or official
By providing clear information about the direction followed, the grass-root leader reduces uncertainty within the groups. She therefore acts as a change agent, by:
- Creating a common vision in the group
- Mobilizing members to support each other
- Allowing time to adapt to the change
A committee of three to five members depending on the size of the group is formed to handle and manage the operations. The tasks are assigned to each member of the committee.
2.3 Strengthening small-scale women farmers capacity and access to assets
To allow the self-help groups to reach resource necessary to get more opportunity created a dense network between the SHGs and its own organizations as well as linkages with external organizations at local, regional and national level to provide the SHGs with a whole set of services, from capacity building to marketing linkages, financial and support services. Access to credit and other financial services like insurance helps in asset building. Asset building is done when the poor have access to savings, tools and equipments, license to sell the agricultural inputs like seeds.
a) Linkages to improve small-scale women farmers human capacity
SEWA’s facilitation approach includes capacity building provided by professional organizations such as SEWA Academy, SEWA Manager’s School and “life schools”. They train grass-roots members in managerial and leadership skills, providing in particular collective trainings for self-organization and collective action such as to become confident leaders. Examples of training include: training and guidance for group formation; training for group governance: decision making procedures, leadership structure, record keeping, accountability and transparent management; training in leadership, negotiation and conflict management.
The low level of literacy among small-scale women farmers is a major challenge to deliver effective training and empower women. SEWA has developed the “life school” to deliver its functional literacy training, which is group-based, organized in the women’s houses and facilitated by a local trainer from the community. Literate members help non-literate ones. The training focuses on reading skills and is designed around women’s specific needs.
Finally, SEWA’s Village Resource Centres help farmers through the SHG to identify the potential benefits of new technologies, evaluate the viability of technological solutions and eventually adopt them, and participate in technology development process.
b) Linkages to improve small-scale women farmers’ access to productive assets and markets
Access to productive assets and markets is facilitated by the Saving self-help groups, Village Resource Centres and the Rural Distribution Network (RUDI).
In a country where women have a main role in cultivation, SEWA’s saving self-help groups help women members to access to productive assets, in particular land and secure their land rights. The saving groups provide credit facilities to 12 736 farmers.
SEWA’s Village Resource Centres enable access to good quality agriculture inputs, market information and technical advice. Quality seeds are crucial input to increase productivity at farm level, but seeds available in rural markets are generally of low quality and outdated. 91 SEWA’s groups are authorized seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides distributors providing reasonably priced quality inputs at the beginning of each season (up to 20% below local market price ).
In 112 villages, the Village Resource Centres communicate current market prices to rural communities in each village cluster. Every Saturday the women’s leaders receive an SMS message with the current prices in nearby markets. Thus, SHG are in a better bargaining position when they market their products.
Among the SEWA’s organizations enabling market access to small-scale women farmers, the rural distribution Network (RUDI) plays a special role. RUDI links the farmers to the end consumers making available goods of regular use to the villagers. Grains, spices and salt from various districts are transported to a processing center and dispatched to selling centers. Rudi provides an outlet to farmer groups and employment to saleswomen.
3. Conclusions
The development of SEWA small-scale and marginalized women self-help initiatives has led to collective capability building and resulted in economic, political and social empowerment. Economically, SHG have allowed women farmers to create and seize new opportunities that respond to their needs and to increase their financial, human and social capital. Politically, these initiatives are a basis for active participation in local governance. Socially, self-help groups can successfully overcome many of the “dilemmas of collective action” and enhance the local bargaining powers of small-scale women farmers' vis-à-vis other social groups.
The process of building organizations can thus be regarded as an exercise of collective empowerment that leads to the generation of new collective capabilities and promotes a sustainable development process. The impact of SEWA on women farmers is well described by Amartya Sen (2001): “No longer the passive recipients of welfare-enhancing help, women are increasingly seen, by men as well as women, as active agents of change: the dynamic promoters of social transformation that can alter the lives of both women and men”.
Finally, the major strength of SEWA’s approach is the creation of an integrated process, in particular through the complementarities among the SHGs and other SEWA institutions such as their microfinance and insurance agencies, their training facilities as well as their communication facilities like the SEWA radio station. Together, they constitute a sustainable system, accountable and inclusive due to its root-based foundations and the effectiveness of service provision through the SHGs organization, but also sufficiently powerful because of its internal cohesiveness and its linkages with external partners: government departments, universities, research and development agencies, NGOs, private companies.
