SAWNET (South Asian Women's NETwork) started as a mailing list in Nov 1991, with about 40 subscribers. The mailing list was originally run by its founders by simply emailing the collected posts to all subscribers every day. The number of subscribers grew rapidly, and the logistics of running it manually became too much for us. Darci Chapman and Lata Narayanan got Sawnet its own email address, which eventually moved to its current home at Concordia University in Canada.

Sawnet is a completely volunteer affair, and the organization has no formal structure, no finances, and no board of directors. It exists entirely in the electronic medium, has no bylaws, and is not registered as an organization anywhere. (We do, however, have mailing list policies). The mailing list is run by a group of volunteer moderators and now reaches about 1100 women in four continents. The subscription list is private.

Sawnet also has no philosophy or goals, except as a medium of communication by & for South Asian women. The political slant of the list depends on who happens to be subscribed and contributing, but often includes opinions from all parts of the spectrum. Posts on the list or this website represent only the opinion of the author of that post.

This web site started as an offshoot of the mailing list. Some subscribers had maintained FAQs on different topics, and when the web started taking over the internet, it seemed only logical to put that information on a web site. Jyothy Reddy and Susan Chacko started the site in 1995 which eventually moved from cs.utexas.edu to its current home, with web space donated by Louiqa Raschid. All the people involved with Sawnet have other fulltime jobs, and squeeze in bits of time for Sawnet as and when possible.

Site: http://www.sawnet.org