Resources

This report summarises how cooperatives owned by informal women workers, associated with SEWA Cooperative Federation, have both been affected by and coped with the crisis. It uses primary-level information, collected through a survey and interviews, as well as financial data from representative cooperatives (in 5 trades of work). This has been supplemented by the effects of larger industry trends seen over the past months, in these trades and sectors of work.

Insights

This study was undertaken by SEWA Cooperative Federation to assess the impact of COVID-19 on informal women workers and their collective enterprises, primarily cooperatives and documents effects of lockdown across five sectors: finance, social security, agriculture, services, and manufacturing. Further, the study maps out the financial trajectories from each sector by providing evidence from the respective representative collective enterprises. The study aims to understand the role of collective enterprises, such as cooperatives, as a support mechanism for informal women workers during a crisis.