2.1 Origin and Purpose of Groups
Generally, groups have been formed due to their ability to address the needs of individuals for identity and empowerment. Napier (1999) notes that the Second World War disoriented people’s lives. The structures that came up with industrialization, urbanization and bureaucratization were dehumanizing or unresponsive to personal and social needs. Alienation and lack of control over immediate social environment created a feeling of stress and apathy. The resultant social change and increased social mobility meant that the traditional support systems (extended family, religion and community) were diminished. Therefore, people in the contemporary society sought for stability, connection, faith and a sense of empowerment in small groups.
Women-only groups have existed in Kenya since pre-independence (Wignaraja 1990). After independence, the government of Kenya embarked on the Harambee Movement (pull together) as an all embracing grassroots efforts to meeting the people’s needs. The traditional purpose of group formation was to promote common economic, political, and social interests. During modern times, the purpose is to: help women adjust to urban life, regulate and promote trade, extend credit, teach new social and occupational skills and provide monetary and psychological support (Kenneth 1973).
During the implementation of the Special Rural Development Programme, self-help groups were also initiated with the intention of finding ways to improve effectiveness of programmes designed to raise rural living standards (Reynolds and Wallis 1976). The argument behind this move was the belief that through self-help, it was possible to achieve a self-generating development – the development of a capacity for self-determinism, self-reliance and self-directed promotion of growth and development.
Staudt (1986, 199) amplifies this when he notes that the specific purpose of this strategy may be improved access to productive assets, i.e., land, labour, and capital; and to generate exchange opportunities, both market and non market involving cash, goods, services, information and or influence.
2.2 Group Characteristics and Activities
It has been observed that an important characteristic of pre-independence groups was their informal nature and their function as mutual aid women work groups. They have, however, undergone changes in the course of time such that at the moment they have a more defined organizational structure, and the activities are those that focus on felt needs of the group and those of the community at large (Wignaraja 1990).
Another characteristic of self-help groups is the local utilization of resources which include local identification of needs, local level mobilization of resources and local level implementation of projects to solve local needs (Mbithi 1974; Smith 1979; Wignaraja 1990). The activities that Kenyan women extensively participate in include control of rural trade as manufacturers and makers of pots, handcrafts, baskets, mats, utensils, and clothing items. It has also been observed that through the group movement, women have expanded their activities from the social to house improvement and economic projects especially in the middle and high potential areas in Kenya. On the other hand, Boserup (1970) notes that African women have traditionally engaged in cooperative efforts for the efficient cultivation and harvesting of crops while Lambert (1956) views groups as embracing a wider political and social functions providing women with organizational and affiliational bases for non-agricultural pursuits.
Other activities of groups include purchase of shares, farms and business (Stamp 1975) and also assisting members in starting and expanding business by lending needed capital. Others are also involved in water projects (Hay and Stitcher 1984; Wignaraja 1990).
2.3 Group Composition and Development
According to Cooper (1975), group composition has five components:
• The numerical size of the group;
• The presence/absence of and nature of prior outside relationships among members;
• The expectations, goals and other salient aspects of motivation and personality of members and the mix of these within the group;
• The sex composition and age/generation composition of the group; and
• The ethnic, language, educational, social class and religious or personal value characteristics and mix of the participants.
Group composition therefore is highly relevant to process, potentials and outcomes of the group experiences. Size alone and especially in combination with the duration of the group experience is closely related to the degree to which members can utilize potential interpersonal and multi-personal avenues of exploration and learning. For example, people are less likely to respond or respond with less effort than they would have if they had been alone (social inhibition effect) (Latane and Darley 1970). When many people are responsible for making a collective decision, each individual bears only a fraction of the responsibility for evaluating and thus individuals’ cognitive effort is minimal. The task therefore should be clearly identified as a cooperative group project involving costly effort; responsibility should be in the group as a whole and not in specific members; rewards to individuals should not be contingent on identifiable individual output; and group interaction should be minimal.
The size of a group greatly influences our attraction to it (Napier 1990). Smaller groups are likely to be more attractive than large ones. In a small group, it is easier to get to know the other members, discover similar interests, share dedications to the cause and have a sense of significant participant. As a group increases in membership, there is a corresponding heterogeneity of interests; members’ feelings towards each other become less personal, concern with the cause is often less intense and there is a reduction in the degree of participation, intimacy and involvement.
A number of researches have observed that women are the majority in self-help projects where 80-90% of them provide unskilled labour in putting up dispensaries, roads, and schools (Staudt 1986; Wignaraja 1990).
Women self-help groups have also been supported in development by the UN. This emanates from the Mexico Conference that declared 1975 as the International Year of Women and its consequent declaration of 1975-1985 as the UN Decade for Women. The particular implication of this was the emphasis on formation of the National Machinery such as National Bureaux and Councils. This gave national significance to women’s issues and encouraged the formation of more groups (Dolphyne 1991).
On the Kenyan scene, however, the expansion of women-only groups is mostly determined by increased number of groups that carry out agricultural and other welfare activities in rural areas. Statistics, for instance, show that by the end of 1989, there were more than 26,000 women-only groups in the country (Chitere and Mutiso 1992). By 1998, however, the number had grown to 97,317. Due to increased unemployment and the gender campaigns, nationally and internationally, many people have come together regardless of their sex and status to collectively meet their needs.
2.4 Government Role in Self-help Groups
The government of Kenya has on its part formally acknowledged that women are a disadvantaged group and made them thus the target of its development plans. Evidence of these efforts is in the formation of the Women’s Bureau in 1975 to coordinate women’s activities. It has also encouraged self-help group activities through the Special Rural Development Programme (SRDP) (Almy and Mbithi 1972). Government development plans between 1970 and 1980, for instance, put emphasis on approaching women’s issues through groups toward poverty alleviation through mobilization of local resources for development purposes.
2.5 Advantages of Groups
Noting from a Zimbabwe case, Wignaraja (1990) indicates that such organizations provide a cost-effective method of transmitting technical information, raising awareness of the inter-relationship between economic and social problems and identifying local solutions. The process also builds a sense of solidarity, self-reliance and organizational capability. For the poor women, it is seen as an instrument of raising their incomes and productivity and improving theirs as well as their families’ material and social well being (Wignaraja 1990; Alila 1992).
2.6 Group and Policy Limitations
Concentration by rural groups on non-viable projects such as cookery, handicrafts and sewing is a limiting factor. In support, Reynolds and Wallis (1976) note that most local people have channelled resources into projects that only absorb rather than produce resources.
At policy level, it is also noted that there is a national tendency to favour self-help group activities that are less productive; i.e., social and domestic projects (Almy and Mbithi 1972). According to these authors, the self-help groups initiated under SRDP concentrated on social/domestic activities (87%) compared to those groups outside SRDP (72%). This is happening at the government policy level despite its declaration in the 1970-1974 Development Plan that the balanced development of any area requires that the resources invested generate further resources in a self-sustaining process. On this account, Feldman (1981) comments that women-only groups should be assisted to engage in activities that have high potential for employment creation and thus greater self-reliance.
2.7 Social Interactions
2.7.1 Leadership
Ian (1981) and Napier (1999) concur on one aspect of leadership: the ability to influence behaviour of others. Accordingly, leadership is defined as the “frequency with which an individual in a group may be identified as one who influences or directs the behaviour of others within the group” (Napier1999, 244). Alternatively, Ian (1981) defines a leader as someone who, by virtue of certain personality characteristics, is consistently able to influence the behaviour of others.
Although people within any given group may possess leadership qualities, the style of leadership is influenced by some other factors rather than the leaders’ expectations. The expectations of the membership and the requirement of the situation are some of the factors identified by Philips (1970). A leader looks like the modality of the membership or what the membership feels the majority should be. According to this argument, therefore, a leader can sustain his position only when his leadership style is a representative of the group which he leads and avoids tampering with group goals. He must be a craftsman, with an ability to direct the efforts of others through the essentials and requirements planned and devised as goal-seeking. Based on this, there are three types of leadership styles:
• Authoritarian: A leader who is directly and centrally involved in the on-going interactions, and expression of attitudes, values and standards that characterize the group.
• Democratic: A leader who wins consensus on a course of action. S/He permits the members to do their work, listens and utilizes their comments and suggestions and offers advice when it is solicited or absolutely necessary.
• Laissez-fare: A leader who is easy-going and makes little attempt to direct or organize the group.
Leadership styles influence the group atmosphere, the relationship among members and their ability to handle stress and their relationship to the leader. Good or effective leadership observes the relationships between the individual leader and the rest of the group. It involves the ability to perceive the need and goals of a group and then to adjust one’s personal approach to meet them. Good leadership is influenced or activated by a number of factors that include:
• The ability to diagnose the demands of the environment and then either adopt his/her leadership style to fit these demands or develop the means to change some or all of the variables;
• Training, education, experience and practice – people are capable of altering behaviour and developing effective leadership styles;
• Maturity of members – having the capability to set high but obtainable goals and a desire for task relevant feelings;
• Willingness to take responsibility which involves motivation and ability (competence); and
• Ability and technical knowledge to do the task and a feeling of self-confidence and self-respect.
Success can be achieved when leaders are free to take risks, openly co-operative, proactive in their search for problems, open to new ideas and innovation, and attentive to all stakeholders.
2.7.2 Gender and Leadership
Personal characteristics such as intelligence, personality traits and social status (sex, race, income) are related to participation rates and leadership (Blau 1964; Cooper 1975). Of importance to this study is the relationship between gender and leadership and its effect on group activities.
Studies show that there is little difference in actual behaviours of male and female leaders, as perceived by the members of the groups (Bartol 1978) and that performance was the same in the groups regardless of the leaders’ sex (Eskilson and Wiley 1976). Other studies show that male stereotype was laden with competence items and the female stereotype with a cluster of warmth and expressiveness items (Broverman et al. 1972). Men are more verbose and more influential and proactively involved in performing the task while women encourage a high degree of participation in management process, share information and power, attempt to enhance the self-worth of those with whom they work and attempt to excite people about their work. Gender distinctions in leadership behaviour can be attributed to role expectations, style and the task demands in the group (Hollander and Yoder 1980). In mixed-sex groups, women generally are less likely to seek that role (Eskilson and Wiley 1976). Recognizing that there are individual differences and that groups and their activities vary widely, women generally do participate less in the presence of men than do men with men. Men in both men-only and mixed-sex groups were found to have more stable rates of participation than did women. But women did have an impact in so far as men in mixed-sex groups increased their expressive remarks, more characteristic of the content of women’s communications (Aries 1976). It was however noted that the correlation between leadership status and participation is higher in mixed-sex than same-sex groups.
2.7.3 Group Cohesion
Group cohesiveness refers to the degree to which the group hangs together as a unit. Festinger (1950, 274) defines group cohesiveness as “the resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain in the group”. Cohesiveness may be represented by the number, strength and patterns of interpersonal attractions with the group. The following are some factors that affect group cohesion:
• Correlation between individual goals and group goals (compatibility): The conformity of the group goals with individual members’ goals increases the group’s attractiveness and cohesiveness.
• Size: The size of the group influences the interaction patterns. People in small groups get to know one another and share responsibilities so that each member’s contribution is of significant value.
• Homogeneity/Heterogeneity: This refers to such areas as ability, sex, race and personality. Other things being constant/equal, groups composed of members having diverse abilities that are relevant to the task perform more effectively than groups composed of members having similar abilities. Group performance usually calls for diverse activities, each of which requires specific abilities that are more likely to be found in mixed ability groups.
Sex stereotypes concerning the characteristics and behaviour of men and women suggest that sex composition should be an important determinant of group behaviour. It is therefore hypothesized that:
• Mixed-sex groups are more effective than same sex groups. Leaders of both sexes address more directive behaviour towards members of their own sex.
• Group members conform more in mixed-sex rather than in same-sex groups. The interaction styles of men and women are affected directly by sex composition of the group. Men are more personally oriented, address individuals more often (as opposed to group) and speak about self more frequently in mixed-sex than same-sex groups whereas women become less dominant in mixed-sex groups (Aries 1976). Groups composed of members who are heterogeneous with respect to personality profiles perform more effectively than those groups composed of members who are homogeneous with respect to personality profiles.
• Group climate: A cooperative relationship is more attractive than a competitive one. More interactions among members increase the attractiveness of a group. When members have a similar attitude towards the group, there is an increased attraction and more cohesion compared to group members with dissimilar attitudes.
• Prestige: The more prestige a person has within a group, or the more that appears to be obtainable, the more s/he will be attracted to the group.
• Relationship to other groups: Groups are more attractive if their position improves with respect to other groups. When any group is doing better, people strive to identify with it. This improves the unity among members of the group.
• Success: Groups gaining success have a higher rate of attractiveness to its members. It is interesting therefore to note that if a person desires membership that is difficult to obtain, she/he values that membership more than if it were easy.
2.7. 4 Socio-cultural Connotations
From the sociological point of view, a community is made up of people who share same language, values, beliefs and other aspects of life. Brokensha and Hodge (1969, 6-10) and Sanders (1966, 26-29) have characterized a community as having a geographical locality, people, culture, personality characteristics and time. The pattern of life of people in a community is influenced by physical, environmental factors and natural resources such as minerals, climate, topography and soils. The size and structure of a population in terms of sex, age and the nature of division of labour are significant. Ethnic composition of people and the quality of social interactions between them vary from one community to another. Culture in terms of values, traditions, norms and belief systems also vary from one community to another. Personality characteristics in terms of psychological attributes of the members also vary from one community to another and from person to person within the community. Time or length of existence of a community determines experiences undergone. All these have a bearing on the behaviour of members of the communities.
According to Mannheim (1939), perceptions give order and organization to social interactions. The issues of resource use are not perceived similarly by all sections of the community. This has consequences for the way in which community members behave in relation to a given, planned, on-going or completed project. However, Mannheim (1939) notes that it is possible to outgrow ideology, transcend it, if you will, through education. He further notes that ideology is just the function of ignorance, parochialism, lack of cosmopolitanism, and distorted image of the social forces.
It is further noted that the salience of kinship has the potential – both latent and manifest – of having adverse effects on the projects, site deliberation and decision making. For example, a scheduled meeting of a locational or sub-locational development committee to deliberate and make a decision regarding the project site and project resource use may fail to reach a quorum and thus be postponed because some committee member(s) went to attend a dead relative’s remembrance (Chitere and Mutiso 1991).
Culture determines social relations in a community by sex and status. It defines rights of ownership and division of labour along sex lines. A number of researches have confirmed that such relations adversely affect women to the extent that they become unable to fend for their families. UNICEF (1989) and Maguire (1984) enlist problems encountered by women. These include:
• Marginalization of women in their productive roles through lack of access to means of production;
• Inadequate health services, lack of appropriate technologies to ease women’s work load, poor nutrition, high fertility and its consequences;
• Disparities between boys and girls in terms of quality of education due to historical, social and cultural factors;
• Low representation of women at decision-making levels, coupled with lack of gender consciousness; and
• Lack of awareness of legal rights, contradictory legal systems, under representation of women in law making structures and adverse cultural, social and religious influences on the legal status of women.
Pala (1975) confirms that women lack security to acquire loans, and low purchasing power of men’s income has hampered their progress. The patterns of traditional land ownership enshrine land ownership rights to men and this has minimized women’s participation in development (Pala 1975). A study by Staudt (1975) also shows that a rural woman as an agriculturalist and trader is limited by structural barriers within the country’s financial and institutional framework. Lack of land ownership rights has affected women as decision-makers – thus women work on land but wield little or no power in decision-making. Fortmann (1998) agrees with this and further notes that even the fruits of a woman belong to her husband. Even with the advent of colonialism, change from subsistence economy to dual sector commercialism and subsistence meant that land ownership rights changed in favour of men while women were to provide the bulk of the rural labour force (Birgegard 1993; Manuh 1989; Keller, Phiri and Milimo 1990).
Illiteracy and ignorance have greatly affected women’s initiatives; for example, over 64% non-literate population of Kenya are women rural inhabitants. Such has been aggravated by the government structural adjustment programmes. Stromquist (1998) has pointed out that government reductions in support of education and training negatively affect poor families to a larger extent. He has also asserted that when this happens, it is the girls in the poor families that are affected most. This causes a disproportionate increase in the work load of women and the girl children as they are required to participate more in earning income for the household’s survival. It further reduces their understanding, organizational performance and managerial abilities. Feldman (1981) notes that lack of material/capital, poor and unreliable communication, lack of markets and technical know how and leadership bickering have contributed a lot to the underdevelopment of women-only groups. Wanjau (1995) adds that women-only group activities have failed to achieve significant improvements due to: lack of clear objectives by all members; presence of one or more obstructive or non collaborative members; attempt by one or few members to manipulate the group towards own objectives; lack of commitment, self discipline and seriousness in group activities; and lack of skill and training in leadership technology, market information, social beliefs, customs and attitudes and political interference. It was also noted that influential figures utilized group’s development projects for their personal gains. For example Mbai sya Eitu (clans of girls) groups were organized among the kamba by local members of parliament for electoral purpose in 1961(Mutiso n.d.).
However, Mading Deng (1994) argues that culture is central to conflict and hence must be central to conflict resolution and development. More specifically, Muntemba (1989) advocates that while discussing women’s relations to the natural resource base especially land, there is need for considering issues of access to and control of; relations to tools of production including aspects of technology; and the areas of power and social structures. Similarly, a Gender and Development (GAD) perspective sees limitations in women-only projects while Women in Development (WID) argues that women’s interests will fully be defended in the complex process of project design and implementation if women are the sole beneficiaries. GAD notes that attitudes, bureaucratic inertia and the permeability of bureaucracies to other competing interests are major barriers to the WID approach. It points to some limitations:
• Because rural women rarely constitute the greatest importance in the eyes of the nation’s decision-makers, women-only projects are unlikely to gain more than a small perhaps only symbolic share of development resources.
• While women’s organizations may indeed be more sympathetic to women’s interests, it is unlikely to have sufficient technical expertise to execute many desirable projects on their own.
• If men perceive that women are getting development assistance while they themselves are not, they are more likely to block the project than if the men see themselves as well as women as beneficiaries.
• There is interconnectedness of male and female activities in a community; for example, women not only supply food and take care of their children, but also commonly work in conjunction with or for men. Altering women’s time-use patterns, land requirement or capital needs is likely to affect men’s vital concerns (Reynolds and Wallis 1976).
Narrowing down to the area of study, the Kakamega Development Plan 1994-1996 asserted that the status of women is very low especially in areas such as legal status, rights to land inheritance and entitlement which are clouded by various traditional biases. Cultural biases against women especially on rights to land ownership and other specific resources are still a major concern. It was therefore the purpose of this study to collect information regarding such factors and their effect on group activities and interactions and whether mixed-sex self-help groups neutralize some of the limitations encountered by women-only groups.
