Nairobi, March 12 -- If you asked a Kenyan woman how many self-help groups she belongs to, you will wonder how she gets time for all of them and fulfil the financial requirements. That they do confirms the importance of these groups.

Wanjiku Kabira and Akinyi Nzioki, in Celebrating Women's Resistance (1993), trace the origin of women's groups to the 1960s and their consolidation to the 1970s through the Women's Bureau, established to domesticate the United Nations Women's Decade (1975- 1985). They note that the groups were primarily meant to enable women generate collective capacity to deal with social and economic problems, and to do things that men would not assist them with.

And what are the benefits of belonging to a women's group? ...