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3.18 Second, it appears that women farmers, who have less education and lower literacy rates than their male counterparts, are mnre likely than men to be persuaded by the types of information provided in group settings. Koons' research in the North West Province argues that women farmers are more receptive when the message is presented in the form of a demonstration or supervised practice than when the message in presented in the form of a lecture or written hand-outs (Koons, 1988). Koons' research also points out that women were less likely than men to rely on information passed on by other farmers.

3.19 Third, gender-based groups do provide women an opportunity to develop much needed leadership, management and economic decision-making skills. Even the most informal groups designate members to leadership positions and often expand beyond their initial organizing rationale into savings, credit, or marketing activities. Some groups even purchase and register land, something individual women are generally unable to do. All in all, groups provide women with an opportunity to interact and to develop skills in a supportive and egalitarian envirorment that is consistent with social roles.

3.20 MIDENO is by no means the first development project to see the potential advantages of promoting and working with groups. However, one of the reasons MIDENO has succeeded with this strategy has been a willingr.ess to recognize that groups have rationales and limitations. For the most part, local groups arise from the realization that individual interests can be furthered by acting cooperatively. An individual farmer sees the advantage of cooperating in a rotating credit society because of the realization of a high disbursement in a time of need or cooperating in a joint purchase of palm oil because of the advantages of realizing the benefits of volume price discounts. Thus groups operate to the extent that members benefit individually and in some relation to their contributions. As such, local groups are not the expression of some traditional communalism or altruism.

3.21 MIDENO has succeeded where others have not because it has kept this distinction in mind. Whether groups are used as a point of contact for extension or as a means of distributing credit, there is always an individual benefit to be gained. For example, women's groups granted food crop loans are not required or expected to use the credit to plant a communally-owned and -worked farm. On the contrary, the group simply provides a mechanism through which credit can be distributed to individual women farmers for use on their own farms.

3.22 Gender Targeting. Gender targeting is a logical complement to a group approach for reaching women farmers. Groups are not all the same and vary in terms of cohesion, rationale, age, and other indicators of group strength. Suppose that groups can be divided into three categories measuring group strength: high, medium, and low/non-existent. Gender targeting may not be a necessary component of a strategy to reach groups in the "high" group strength category, but it is certainly necessary if groups of women in the other two categories are to benefit from agricultural services.

3.23 Women's groups exhibiting high-levels of cohesion may not require the initial phase of working with a woman extension agent because: (1) such groups and the idea of group activity are likely to be well-integrated into the local culture and (2) such groups are likely to have had previous experience with male