In India, over 90 per cent of the workforce is self-employed. With no formal employer-employee relationship, they often have to turn to the law courts to settle disputes with contractors, or to establish their rights to a minimum wage. The outcome usually depends on the testimony given by the appellant - often a woman, and frequently illiterate. Under intimidating cross-examination by professional lawyers, it can be hard for witnesses to argue their case consistently. This is where SEWA - the Self Employed Women’s Association - decided that video could help out.

"The atmosphere is very intimidating for me," explains SEWA secretary Renana Jhabvala, "so you can imagine what it is like for the SEWA members. The lawyers try to cut their evidence into pieces and call them liars. This is very difficult for the women to deal with, and they usually change their statements."

When a group of bidi workers (women who roll cigarettes) were preparing to go to court and testify, SEWA set up a mock court audience - and the Video SEWA team recorded the proceedings. The bidi rollers then watched the tapes, discussed the outcome with the SEWA lawyer, and used the experience to build up their confidence and prepare themselves for the actual court proceedings. Like athletes who visualise their performance before a critical contest, the mock trial gave the bidi rollers a positive image of themselves performing under pressure in the court room.

This is just one of the many imaginative ways SEWA is now using video to empower and train women throughout their networks.

Using Video to get to the Heart of the Issue
The Self-Employed Womenís Association (SEWA) is a trade union of over 25,000 poor, self-employed women in Gujarat, India (there are nine smaller SEWAs in other States). The members of SEWA fall roughly into three categories; small scale vendors who sell goods such as vegetables, fish, household items, garments and other products; homebased producers who often work on piece rates, making products like incense sticks, garments, or block printing fabrics; and service providers who sell their labour. SEWA members are organised by trade group, and the various trades are represented at all levels of the organisation. SEWA lobbies for women’s rights and runs a co-operative bank. In addition to its union activities, the organisation has established development programs which provide its members with a bank, skills training, co-operative mechanisms to aid in production and marketing, child care and health benefits. By combining activism with advocacy for women’s rights and development, SEWA enables its members to protect their interests, to improve their standards of living and to play a role in the economy.

The decision to introduce video came about as a result of a visit that Ela Bhatt, founder and General Secretary of SEWA, made to Mali where she was inspired by the sight of Malian women - in the same situation as many SEWA members - making video tapes. Back in India, the SEWA members were tired of outside producers making videos about them - outsiders who never told the stories the way SEWA would, and so never quite touched the audiences SEWA needed to. Ela felt tapes about banking practices, skills training and legal rights among others would be invaluable in helping urban-to-rural dissemination of SEWA activities. She also envisaged using video tapes to educate women about their rights, to organise and to train.

Breaking Down Barriers of Illiteracy
Video SEWA was established in 1984 with one set of production equipment and three weeks of training from Communication for Change (formerly Martha Stuart Communications). Of the 20 SEWA members and workers who participated in training, one third were illiterate and another third had less than a high school education. They included women of all ages - Hindus and Muslims, craftswomen and vendors and women from many arms and levels of SEWA, including three senior organisers.

Video at SEWA did not happen overnight. After the initial training, the video team practised and experimented with the skills they had learned. SEWA union did not pressure the team to produce results quickly because they, too, were involved in learning the possibilities for video within SEWA’s context. Everyone had time to develop her skills. The illiterate producers memorised the function and placement of each function of a piece of equipment. But they had problems when they used a different model with the same buttons in different places. To get round this, they were given functional literacy in 20 video words, to enable them to operate any piece of equipment.

For the first three years, they worked without electronic editing equipment. All of their programmes were shot in sequence and edited in the camera. They developed skills and disciplines which most non-professionals never achieve. This method of production suits illiterate producers, since they record their stories in the same order as they tell them. Moreover, it is very efficient: a programme can be completed in a few hours.

Learning By Seeing
Video has been a part of SEWA for almost 10 years now, playing an important role in helping SEWA to achieve its goals of building a movement of self-employed women and of producing lasting social change. SEWA organisers are unequivocal in their support of Video SEWA’s work. They contribute programme ideas and use the videos to raise womenís awareness about collective action and their rights.

Understanding the strength and power of collective action comes slowly to the grassroots women who participate in workers’ education classes. For many it is a completely new idea. Video SEWA has taped several of their public processions. The recording shows hundreds of poor women marching through the streets of Ahmedabad chanting their demands. These tapes are perhaps the most powerful, and most often used, videos. They raise spirits, inspire confidence and solidarity, and illustrate the power of collective action.

Renana Jhabvala remembers one particularly powerful example in Lucknow. "We took this video of the garment workers’ procession to Lucknow where we are organising the women who do Chikan embroidery (the traditional hand stitched embroidery of Lucknow)," she recalls. "They are the worst paid that I have seen anywhere, and they are Moslem - so very conservative. We did some training with them and talked about organising, coming out of their homes and not wearing purdah (veil worn by Moslem women). On the last day we showed the tape, and they were so excited and jumped up to plan out the route for their own procession. In reality, they were nowhere near the stage where they could take out a procession, but this enthusiasm is helping them to get organised. When women actually see that others like them have succeeded through organising it makes a really big difference."

This article is an extract from a longer piece written for the ILO, ‘The Power of Video in the hands of Grassroots Women: Video SEWA - A Case Study’ by Sara Stuart and Renuka Bery.