She completed her Bachelor degrees in Mathematics from Delhi University and Harvard University, USA and went on to do an MA in Economics from Yale University. She joined Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in the year 1978 as an organizer, when SEWA was five years old. She started her work in SEWA with the women workers stitching quilts in the Muslim area of Ahmedabad and went on to form the first Cooperative in SEWA. Her main work was organizing women into SEWA as a trade union and in 1981, she was elected as a Secretary of SEWA under Ela Bhatt and organized bidi workers, agricultural workers, garment workers, street vendors and many others to bargain for higher income, better working conditions, space to work and social security. She was active in initiating SEWA across India, taking the experiences of SEWA to States like Madhya Pradesh and Bihar and most recently to Uttrakhand and West Bengal. She was instrumental in forming SEWA Bharat, a National Federation of SEWAs now in nine States of India. In 1995, she became the National Coordinator of SEWA and started the national office in Delhi.
When the women members of SEWA began expressing the need for basic infrastructure and housing, she was one of the founders of the Mahila Housing SEWA Trust. In 2002 she became the Chair of SEWA Bank and helped to increase finance for poor women in many parts of the country. She was awarded a Padma Shri Award by Government of India in the year 1990. She has been active at the international level and represented SEWA at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1995 and 1996 during the discussion on Convention for Home Workers; and subsequently in 2002 during the Resolution on the Informal economy. At the South Asia level she was instrumental in forming HomeNet South Asia, bringing together organisations in India, Pakistan. Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan working with women homebased workers. She is presently the Chair of HomeNet South Asia. She is one of the founders and present Chair of WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment and Organizing) and has been active in the formation of international networks for women workers in the informal economy. In addition to organizing women into trade unions and co-operatives she has been interested and involved in policy issues of poor women and of the informal economy. She has been active in many Government committees and task forces which have formulated policies ranging from National Policy for Street vendors, to the Law for Social Security of Unorganised Workers to Policies for unorganised workers in various States. She has written widely on these issues in journals and newspapers and has co-authored seven books.
1. Books
1. ‘Social Income and Insecurity: A Study in
2. ‘Empowering Women in an Insecure world: Joining SEWA makes a difference’ Co-authored with Sapna Desai and Jignasa Dave;
3. ‘Membership-Based Organization of the Poor’ Co-edited with Martha Chen,
4. Women, Work and Poverty, Chen, Vanek,
5. Informal Economy Centrestage: New Structures of Employment , Co-edited with Ratna M. Sudarshan and Jeemol Unni; Sage Publications,
6. The Unorganised Sector: Work Security and Social Protection, Co-edited with R.K.A. Subrahmanya, Sage Publications,
7. ‘Speaking Out’, Women’s Economic Empowerment in South Asia Co-edited with Marty Chen and Marilyn Carr, IT Publications, 1997
2. Selected Articles in Journals
1.“Social Protection for women workers in the Informal Economy”, in Comparative Labour Law &Policy journal, Vol 27, Number 2, Winter 2006 (With Shalini Sinha).
2.‘The Idea of Work”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXXIX, no 48, 2004 (with Ela Bhatt)
3.“Indian Women Use Video to Spark Collective Action” in Communication for Change, 2003.
4.“New Forms of Workers’ Organisations: Towards A System of Representation and Voice” in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, April-June, 2003, No.2, Vol.46.
5. Liberalisation and the Woman Worker by Renana Jhabvala and Shalini Sinha in Economic and Political Weekly, May 25, 2002.
