Resource
India: Self-Employed women's association insurance scheme (Gujarat)
Summary (English)
The Self-Employed Women¿s Association (SEWA), registered since 2006 as a trade union, has developed an innovative and promising approach. It represents the interests of some one million poor women working in the informal economy, and covers 194,000 people, 80% of them living in Gujarat State. SEWA¿s aims are to organize women workers to attain full employment security and to make them individually and collectively self-reliant, economically independent and capable of making their own decisions. The risks covered are the following: health, life, accidental death, assets and maternity. SEWA has it own bank and an innovative insurance scheme called VimoSEWA. Currently the insurance plan still has challenges to face such as increasing health benefits, shifting from individual to family enrolment, reducing administrative costs, etc.
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Note
Technical Paper published at the ILO Asia-Pacific Regional High-Level Meeting on Socially-Inclusive Strategies to Extend Social Security Coverage, held in New Delhi, India, 19-20 May 2008.