Fostering collective endurance: The history of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India

How does social entrepreneurship in the Global South cope with chronic underdevelopment and resource scarcity? In response, this comment turns to the history of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), the largest trade union in India representing self-employed women workers in the informal economy, and its work among poor women in promoting several successful cooperatives. It argues that SEWA fostered collective endurance amongst its members, thereby building their capacity to aspire. Such collective endurance subverts the binary conceptions of ‘heroic’ social entrepreneurs and ‘victim’ beneficiaries. Instead, SEWA’s history exemplifies empowerment rooted in the strength of sisterhood and subaltern feminist solidarity among poor, women workers in the Global South.