All else follows. SEWA helps self-employed women strengthen their economic position by assisting them in confronting exploitative middlemen, contractors and merchants, demanding just treatment from government agencies and the legal system and effecting policy and legislative changes through such strategies as class action suits. The importance of organizing Organizing poor women is a long, difficult, obstacle-strewn process. These workers are vulnerable and geographically scattered. It is crucial that poor women be encouraged to believe in themselves and the power of collective action.
Tremendous changes occur in workers who realize the strength that they have together.
Women who previously could not even articulate their names, speak with courage and confidence to government officials, police officers and others. Then I saw that if we all came together, we would have the courage to stand up boldly for our rights, the courage that we all individually lack. She describes what happened when the vegetable sellers challenged the city's regulations in court. We fought right up to the Supreme Court. The answer is SEWA,' I said.