Masculinities and Young Men’s Participation in Self-Help Groups

Documented evidence shows that young men in Kenya have in the past been less likely than women to engage in self-help groups and prefer, unlike women, to go it alone. However, with the advent of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund in 2006, this scenario has changed. Since then, the number of registered youth groups has risen dramatically. Still, their numbers are considerably lower than expected, given the levels of poverty, and compared to the numbers of women in groups. In attempting to explain these discrepancies, this research investigates the relationship between masculinities and young men's participation in self-help groups from a social constructionist and intersectional perspective. I demonstrate through findings that beliefs and behaviours linked to self-help groups’ membership, like other social practices that women and men engage in, are a means for demonstrating femininities and masculinities and are linked to wider social processes, identities, experiences and role expectations in the society. I further demonstrate that the social practices that undermine young men's involvement in self-help groups are too often signifiers of masculinity and instruments that men use in the negotiation of social power and status. Finally, I expose the struggles young men go through daily to meet the cost of manhood, and the concomitant price they pay for it. In this regard, the paper proposes areas for policy reorientation and further research that can help promote participation of young men in self-help groups, and in programmes that address their rights and needs, and their involvement in the development discourses. I conclude that certain markers of masculinity and manhood are constructed, reinforced and sustained through complex social configurations and that for young men economic exigencies reframe these gender markers to meld with the necessity for survival.