a department within the Women's Wing of TLA specifically devoted to women in the informal economy. Gender discrimination was apparent in TLA, whose leading figures were all male during the time of SEWA's involvement in the organization. Despite the rift between TLA and SEWA, there are clear influences of the Mahatma in SEWA's principles of truth, non-violence, and integration of all people that shape the organization to be so successful. Driving SEWA's every decision are satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integrating all faiths, all people) and khadi (propagation of local employment and self reliance), which all helped Gandhi organize poor people in the Indian independence movement. Ela Bhatt In 1972, SEWA materialized first as a collective of women that worked outside the textile mills and other formalized sources of income—individuals not targeted by TLA. An early survey of SEWA members found that 97% lived in slums, 93% were illiterate, the average member had four children, and one in three were the primary bread-winner. Its first large project was the SEWA Cooperative Bank, established in 1974 to provide loans to low-income members. Behind all these accomplishments was SEWA's founder Ela Bhatt. Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad on 7 September 1933 to a Brahman caste family of lawyers and was, herself, a lawyer for TLA beginning in the early 1950s. Bhatt found that poor women in Ahmedabad were not just domestic workers, but conducted a variety of businesses at home—as hawkers, street vendors, construction labourers—and were not being represented in India's economy. Incredibly enough, 94% of Indian working women were self-employed in 2009, yet it took until 1972 for any sort of informal labour union to form. The former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw Elaben Bhatt as one of her role models. Hillary visited SEWA first in 1995. In one of her speeches, she described Elaben as soft-spoken and a visionary leader. Tools for struggle and development Organizing model SEWA goes beyond being a labour union and additionally acts as a meeting point for poor, Indian women who are regularly marginalized across rural landscapes and isolated to urban slums. The model has spread from Ahmedabad to other parts of Gujarat as well as to other Indian states as part of the larger federation SEWA Bharat. SEWA's organizing model brings together women across castes and class who share experiences of labour exploitation. A survey of SEWA members show that its women