UN Women is the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women created to accelerate progress on gender equality and the realization of women’s rights. UN Women is a dynamic and strong champion for women and girls, providing them with a powerful voice at the global, regional and local levels. UN Women’s Multi Country Office (MCO), based in New Delhi, India covers four countries of the region, namely Bhutan, India, Maldives, and Sri Lanka. In South Asia, UN Women specifically focuses on: Strengthening women’s economic security and rights; Ending violence against women; and Promoting women’s political leadership in democratic governance and peace building.

UN Women places a strong emphasis on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation to enhance the quality of its programmes and to demonstrate its impact on the ground. UN Women establishes and maintains a system for developing Management Responses to Evaluations and their tracking, and to make Evaluation Reports available to the public to strengthen accountability. Under the UN Women Evaluation Strategy 2014, UN Women MCO promotes accountability and knowledge sharing on Gender Responsive Monitoring and Evaluation.

Evaluation is particularly critical in the context of South Asia, home to complex social structures, high rates of poverty, gender discrimination, dynamic forces of globalization sweeping traditional societies and numerous development projects for the large populations of this region. Innovative evaluation approaches and practices are particularly important in such complex contexts.

In this context, UN Women published its First Edition of the Annual UN Women Publication on Gender and Evaluation in 2013 based on research papers submitted by the practitioners/evaluators in South Asia. The objective of this publication was to bring together lessons and perspectives of various development practitioners and researchers who are grappling with the challenge of evaluating women’s empowerment and gender equality. The publication is intended for evaluators, policy makers, development practitioners and students who are interested in gender responsive evaluations.

The second edition of this publication supports gender and evaluation practitioners to gain greater insights of their research topics through interaction with the broader evaluation community, gain productively from the peer review process, and richly contributes to the fast-growing field of gender responsive evaluations.

For Registration, please contact Madhulika Singh-UN Women at madhulika.singh@unwomen.org (Mobile: 8800288522)