Girl groups are cash cows. If you're a serious player, you've got to have one. Or two. Or three.

If you're talking numbers, however, the 1960s had absolutely nothing on the late 1990s. The scramble to find and sign fresh talent in the UK makes the gold rush look like a dignified stroll. To the music industry, girl groups are cash cows. If you are a serious player, you've got to have one. Or two. Or three.

A quick canvass of record companies yields a list that includes chart regulars All Saints, Cleopatra, Eternal, Destiny's Child and N-Tyce, along with unheralded also-rans with names such as Fab! and Vanilla, and a whole host of hopeful newcomers being groomed for stardom, among them the Danish trio Juice (signed to Chrysalis), Made in London (RCA), the Paper Dolls (MCA), Soap (Sony) and Honeyz (Mercury). Seldom has a trend been picked up with such enthusiasm, or sold with such vigour.

Of course, anyone who has evolved beyond the level of a single-cell organism and isn't a high-court judge will be aware that at least one name is missing from the above list. The girl-group explosion flows directly from the arrival of the Spice Girls, the most successful British pop group since the Beatles, and record companies would be failing in their duty to shareholders if they didn't try to get a piece of that action.

As such, the proliferation of girl groups looks no more surprising or intrinsically interesting (or even, necessarily, pleasing to the ear) than military powers squabbling over a far-flung piece of oil-rich turf. Except that nobody gets hurt - beyond the odd false nail stuck somewhere painful.

What is interesting and markedly different from the 1960s is the way that this post-Spice generation of girl groups is being sold. Press releases accompanying the weekly launches of new acts have more in common than their authors probably realise. The text will usually be dusted with wishful descriptions such as "different", "feisty" and "in control". No way can these artists be described as "puppets", we are told, because they have "attitude" and take a keen interest in the writing of their songs. And another thing: these girls are not afraid to be sexy. So don't let's hear any muttered complaints from you chaps at the back with the crossed eyes and the strangely distended tongues.

The message is clear. These are modern women, part of a pop evolutionary march that reflects, even anticipates, processes in wider society. Madonna opened the door. The Spice Girls stomped through and nailed the "girl power" flag to the mast. Ouch.

No way can these artists be described as "puppets" because they have "attitude" and take a keen interest in the writing of their songs.

The problem is that we are entitled to be sceptical of the "girl power" concept if we suspect that the shots are being called, 1960s-style, by a load of geezers in suits. The Spice Girls were great fun for a while and could be said to have fashioned an astute corporate identity for themselves, if not quite the music.

Questioning Honeyz - an Anglo-French trio in the slick R&B soul mould of the successful American outfit En Vogue (as many of the latest girl groups are) - on the nature of this creative partnership can be a mirthful experience. Celena is the tough, talkative one and has clearly taken advice on how to deal with the subject of authorship. Our conversation goes like this.

Who writes your material?

"We wrote a lot of the album ourselves. We just took personal experiences from our lives and then wrote songs from those."

You wrote the songs?

"Well, mainly the lyrics. We helped with the ideas, we knew what we wanted, but we didn't, erm. . ."

So you had a strong idea of the musical direction you wanted to go in?

Womyn still have a long way to go to achieve parity in the music business, and are still largely regarded as software by the powers that be.

Right. In any other context, where the music came from and how it was written would be of little or no concern. Who wants to be a pasty-faced, backroom knob-twiddler, anyway?

Yet, the way these groups are being marketed makes it relevant. Contrary to expectations, women still have a long way to go to achieve parity in the music business, and are still largely regarded as software by the powers that be. In fact, the music of Honeyz amounts to good, soulful pop and they are appealing characters for whom it is easy to have admiration.

Before we write off the girl-group explosion as just one more pop trend to be sold then scrapped with all the ceremony of a sex scene in a Jackie Collins bonkbuster, there is another dimension to be explored. In order to describe it, I'm going to call on a witness who is far more expert in these matters than I am: my 4 1/2 -year-old daughter, Lotte. Like most of her little girlfriends, the first non-nursery rhyme she learnt the words to was the Spice Girls' Wannabe. I've watched, with an uncomfortable mixture of panic and amusement, as she has perfected the choreography, polished her microphone technique on loo-roll holders and become skilled at passing judgment on a range of outfits, the like of which she will doubtless one day cheerfully wear over my dead body. Even that is preferable to the willowy, Aryan perfection of Barbie, however.

She and her friends like the girl groups and respond to women singers generally, having not yet learnt the art of worshipping boys. The first time she saw the Spice Girls on television, she turned and said: "I like those little girls, daddy." She thought they were like her. And she's not the only one.

Alex Needham, of Smash Hits, confides that the girl groups have transformed the composition and content of the magazine's postbag. "Before the Spice Girls, girls were in groups to be fancied by blokes. Everyone assumed that their most enthusiastic audience would be men, but that hasn't been the case at all. The other thing is that girls often seem to have a harder time when they are growing up. If you look at the letters pages of J17, you see lots of stuff about girls competing with and ganging up on each other. The Spice Girls are, or at least were, a gang of girls who were really supportive of each other. They're a good example."

By extension, so are the other girl groups. Asked if he thinks they will last, Needham comments: "I think they will. The Spice Girls have changed the market so radically that girls expect to see other girls in groups now. They would find it a bit odd being asked just to watch boys again. I hope the other girl groups will start to get the marketing they deserve as a result, and won't just be sold on the basis of how little clothing they wear."

The way most girl groups are being presented to us is typically cynical and invariably fraudulent, though the number of exceptions to this rule - such as the recent chart-toppers B*Witched - is growing. But sometimes illusions have their uses and this could be just such a case.

It is easy to forget that the ability to have fun is an attribute children learn like any other. Most of the girl groups at least look like they know how to do that. Now someone needs to work out a strategy for those appallingly insipid boy bands.