Ela Bhatt is the founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) and served as the General Secretary of SEWA from 1972-1996. SEWA is the Self-Employed Womens Association of India, a trade union founded in 1972 after a split in the Textile Labour Association. ...
A lawyer by training, Dr. Bhatt is a respected leader of the international labour, cooperative, women, and micro-finance movements who has won several national and international awards.
She was one of the founders of Women's World Banking and served as its chair from 1980-1998. She currently serves as the Chair of the SEWA Cooperative Bank, of HomeNet, of the International Alliance of Street Vendors, and of WIEGO. She is also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. She was granted an honorary Doctorate degree in Humane Letters by Harvard University in June 2001. Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is a global research and policy analysis network linked to the SEWA-inspired international movement of women in the informal economy. ...
ELABHATTs maternal grandfather was a doctor and a devoted follower of Gandhi; he was jailed three times for his participation in satyagraha.
ELA continued to work in the union's legal departmentdoing what she described as a "compromise between legal work and social work"until the birth of their children, Amimayi (1958) and Mihir (1959).
BHATT was aware that thousands of wives and daughters of textile workers, as well as other women, toiled as self-employed junk-smiths, garment makers, vegetable vendors and hawkers to supplement the family income.
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