A shravika is a lay Jain woman, the fourth division of the community that Mahavira is held to have founded, taking the same limited vows as the layman and sharing his role in the world.
The householder discipline
The shravika, like the shravaka, is a hearer of the teaching who lives as a householder rather than a renunciant, observing the lesser vows suited to lay life, the restrained forms of non-violence, truthfulness, restraint and the rest, and supporting the ascetic community by alms and service, so her religious life is that of the devout layperson bound by a discipline adapted to the householder. She keeps the fasts and observances of the tradition, and the maintenance of the strict Jain dietary discipline in the home falls largely to the laywomen.
A full division of the community
The shravika completes the fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen that the tradition traces to Mahavira, so the laywoman, like the layman, holds a recognised place in the structure of the religion, and the four divisions together make up the whole Jain community. The lay Jains, men and women, are the material support of the ascetics and the great majority of the community, and their observance sustains the tradition in the world while the ascetics carry its fuller practice. The shravika thus represents the ordinary devout Jain woman, and her inclusion as one of the four divisions marks the recognition, in the very structure of the community, that the religion is carried by its laity as well as by its renunciants.