Membership, Governance, Benefits and Challenges in Women’s Participation in Collective Action Groups

Abstract

This paper offers a broad review of the literature on women’s groups, developing a typology of different group types, describing rules of membership and outcomes with a focus on collective action. Four group typologies ensued from the literature, namely self-help groups; natural resource management groups; processing and marketing cooperatives; and farming cooperatives. We find that significant gaps remain in terms of women’s ability to reap full benefits from these groups due to many constraints, most notably societal gender norms. All groups studied in this paper are geared towards collective action in varying degrees, however, our findings reveal that the type of group determines the extent of women’s empowerment and the benefits women derived from their participation