Structuring a Movement and Spreading It on: History and Growth of the Working Women's Forum in India 1978-2003

Founded in 1978, the goal of the Working Women's Forum is to improve living conditions of working women in India. Its struggle against poverty and insufficient social protection includes programs for women's health and welfare, and credits and cooperatives to enhance the economic participation of women. This organization has developed into a platform for empowerment, giving Indian women both voice and capacity to realize their economic and social goals. The Working Women's Forum has, for over a decade and a half, mobilized the poorest, and the most marginalized sector of the work force in India. Poor women workers face constraints and oppression by their barriers of caste, class, and gender that further marginalize their position both at home and at work place. Caste affiliation restricts their mobility and formulates cultural norms for their social behavior. Class membership limits their access to productive resources and makes them invisible in the economic spheres. The gender roles relegate women to a low productive occupation near the household, minimizing their economic role as only an extension of their domestic chores. In detailing the history and growth of the Working Women's Forum in India, Structuring a Movement and Spreading It On shows how women workers are undermined as workers, defined as housewives, and forced to a status of invisibility, living in subsistence and marginal survival conditions. Their vital contribution to the productive process and thereby the nation's economy is unrecognized. Therefore, the nation's planning process never makes the requisite allocations for the growth and development of this section. It is this segment of the work force that have beenorganized by the Working Women's Forum through credit cooperatives and collective spirit of unionism that has brought about a sea change in the lives of the poorest women. Today, thousands of women have been released from the clutches of perpetual indebtedness and dependency on moneylenders and other middlemen. Women have thus been able to save, create assets, and improve the quality of living, thus ensuring growth with equity.