SEWA as an organization suffered discrimination in its early history, because, although a women's union, it was represented by a male. It had no freedom of work or autonomy. In effect it was expelled from TLA. In 1981 it separated from its parent organization to become independent. And since then it has been working to organize and assist self-employed women in several different ways. It has supported cooperatives and provided outside coordination such as marketing. It also runs support services such as a totally women's bank where vegetable-vendors can get a better loan. Its membership of 4,000 in 1984 has grown now to 20,000 in 1988, in Ahmedabad alone. SEWA has partly been co-opted by the system (Ela Bhatt being on various governmental committees, and earlier in the planning commission). It has taken a soft-liberal approach and has refrained from speaking against the government, or pursuing women's struggle in other areas than the self-employed. The government has failed to provide support to the unorganized informal sector of the self-employed. SEWA is a trade union organization with a predominant economic interest of self-employed women. Its achievement is that it has organized this poor and somewhat homogenous group and have provided them with welfare services. But it has not dealt with class and patriarchy issues directly, and its effort for expansion through SEWA-Bharat has not been very successfully.