E-discussion: Evaluating SDGs with an equity-focused & gender responsive lens (no one left behind)

[Rituu B Nanda]

The purpose of the consultations (18th Jan-18th Feb 2016)

Following the approval of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly and by the international development community in 2015, EvalPartners (including EvalGender+) and United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG)’s members have begun to form working groups to strengthen monitoring and evaluation systems to assess these different goals.  The purpose of the present consultations, organized by EvalGender+, UNEG and the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of UN Women, is to provide guidance to strengthen M&E systems to assess all SDGs with an equity-focused and gender-responsive lens, in addition to Goal 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) and Goal 10 (Reduce inequality within and among countries).  The above mentioned agencies and network, in collaboration with other strategic stakeholders, are planning to prepare a guidance note that will assist both actors directly involved in social equity and gender equality, as well as all actors involved with the evaluation of the SDGs, in ensuring that social equity and gender equality are adequately addressed in all of the SDG evaluations. It is intended to produce a first version of this Guidance note by June 2016.  The SDG strategy is to work through, and to help strengthen existing M&E systems at the national and local levels and consequently the focus of the present consultations is on indicators and approaches that can be implemented through existing M&E structures – many of which may have limited experience and resources to address social equity and gender equality issues.

In addition to their importance as stand-alone sustainable development goals, both of these are cross-cutting themes that must be integrated into the assessment of all of the other goals.  For example, the achievement of Goal 2 (end hunger), Goal 3 (ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages), Goal 7 (ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable modern energy) and Goal 13 (take urgent action to combat climate change) – to mention only four, all have important gender dimensions that affect the achievement of these goals.  Similarly, there are social equity dimensions to all goals. To read more on SDGs visit the link "Transforming our world:  The 2030 agenda for sustainable development.https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

The consultations identify four important themes that must be addressed in the M&E systems to assess SDGs with an equity-focused and gender-equality lens, in addition to goals 5 and 10:

• Theme 1:  The relevance of “new metrics” (measurement tools and indicators) for the evaluation of SDGs from an equity-focused and gender-responsive perspective.
• Theme 2:  Evaluation and complexity – Dealing with the increasing complexity of development and interconnectedness of SDGs to ensure “no one is left behind”
• Theme 3:  Towards equity-focused and gender-responsive national evaluation systems – Multi-stakeholder partnerships to strengthen national evaluation capacities
• Theme 4:  Demand for and use of evidence from equity-focused and gender responsive evaluation to inform equitable development

Each of these themes has different implications in different countries, regions, sectors and according to the type of organization.  Consequently we invite you to share your experiences and perspectives to assist the EvalGender+, UNEG, UN Women IEO teams in ensuring that the Guidance Note will reflect the diversity of experiences and perspectives in different countries, regions and types of organization.

 

Theme 1:  The relevance of “new metrics” (measurement tools and indicators) for the evaluation of SDGs from an equity-focused and gender-responsive perspective.

In recent years a number of “new metrics” have evolved which can potentially widen the range of indicators and measures available for the monitoring and evaluation of development results from equity and gender responsive perspectives. These include:

• Data that can now be collected through mobile phones, tablets, internet, GPS mapping and other new information technologies
• Big Data collected from satellites and drones, remote sensors, analysis of twitter and social media, mobile phone records, digital electronic transfers including purchase of mobile-phone air time and ATM withdrawals and crowdsourcing
• Participatory consultations (e.g. Most Significant Change, Outcome Harvesting, PRA)
• Concept mapping
• Mixed methods evaluations and
• Feminist research methods (e.g. oral history, feminist ethnography and content analysis, power relations, social justice and empowerment approaches)

Participants are invited to share their thoughts and experiences on the following questions (as well as others they propose)as they relate to equity-focused and gender responsive evaluation.

• In your experience what are some of the limitations of current data collection methods and the kinds of indicators they produce?
• What are the most difficult issues to measure with respect to social equity? and with respect to gender equality?
• What are the new challenges for assessing sustainable social equity and gender equality?
• What have proved some of the most effective methods?
• In addition to those mentioned above, what other new metrics are you familiar with?
• Which of the new metrics show the greatest promise?

Theme 2: Evaluation and complexity – Dealing with the increasing complexity of development and interconnectedness of SDGs to ensure “no one is left behind”

As SDGs are interconnected, national policies and programme to implement them will be complex. As programs grow in size and scope, the number of partners and stakeholders and in terms of the kinds of social and behavioral changes they seek to produce, they become more complex – both in terms of how they are designed and implemented, but also in terms of how they must be evaluated.  Complexity is defined in terms of: (a) the nature of the programme, (b) the number of partners and stakeholders and the patterns of interaction among them (including the level of consensus or disagreement among them on the goals of the programs), (c) the number of external (contextual) factors that influence how the programme is implemented and its outcomes and (d) the complexity of the causal chains through which outcomes are to be achieved.  A number of additional factors are particularly important for the evaluation of social equity and gender equality, including: (i) social and cultural constraints and pressures, (ii) the power relationships and social definition of gender relations and social equity, (iii) multiple influences on processes of behavioral change, (iv) the role of social media, and (v) the long, non-linear causal chains through which changes are produced.

Participants are invited to share their thoughts and experiences on the following questions (as well as others they propose) as they relate to equity-focused and gender responsive evaluation.

• Which dimensions of complexity are most important in your work on social equity and gender equality?
• How does complexity affect our understanding of the effectiveness of different interventions on the production of changes in social equity and gender equality?
• What methods and approaches have you found most effective for understanding the outcomes of complex programs on social equity and gender equality?
• The processes of change are long, involving many actors and contextual factors.  Also the processes are not linear as advances on one front often involve set-backs on others.  What kinds of evaluation strategies have you found most effective in these complex scenarios?
• What are the special challenges for understanding the impacts of different interventions on the most vulnerable populations?  What evaluation methods are most effective for studying these very sensitive processes of change?

Theme 3: Towards equity-focused and gender-responsive national evaluation systems – Multi-stakeholder partnerships to strengthen national evaluation capacities

 

The SDGs pose challenges for national evaluation systems as the SDGs require the involvement of a broader range of stakeholders, a broadening of the range of indicators to be measured and the methodological and organizational problems required to assess sustainability which requires collecting data over a much longer period of time.  Many programmes are intended to produce benefits that continue over five or even ten years and the evaluation must (ideally) continue over all of this period.  So instead of conventional evaluations that often only cover the 3-5 years of project implementation, the SDG evaluations may be required to continue for twice as long.  The application of a social equity and gender equality lens will often present additional challenges for national evaluation systems, including the fact that the evaluation of gender outcomes and impacts is often the weakest part of many national evaluation systemsand the methodologies for evaluating social equity are also not well developed in many countries (or in the evaluation literature in general).  Given resource constraints of many evaluation agencies, it will often not be possible to consider specialized evaluations that focus exclusively on equity and gender, and it will be necessary to adapt standard M&E methodologies to address these issues.  It will be important to consider the extent to which some of the multi-shareholder partnerships can bring in agencies with expertise in these areas and with additional resources that may permit the selective application of gender and equity focused data collection and analysis methodologies

 

Participants are invited to share their thoughts and experiences on the following questions (as well as others they propose) as they relate to equity focused and gender-responsive evaluation.

• In your experience what will be the main challenges that national evaluation systems will face when evaluating social equity and gender equality?
• In the countries with which you are familiar, how well established are the methodologies for evaluating these two areas.
• Which kinds of organization have the most experience in the evaluation of these two areas?  Are these organizations already part of the national evaluation systems?  If not, what will be required to ensure their active involvement?
• What kinds of evaluation capacity development will be required to strengthen the capacity of the national evaluation systems to address these issues?
• What are the example of successful partnership in your country or in your area of work to strengthen M&E systems in general, and equity-focused and gender-responsive systems in particular?
• What are the opportunities and challenges for such partnerships?

Theme 4:  Demand for and use of evidence from equity-focused and gender responsive evaluation to inform equitable development

 

Experience from all regions and sectors shows that one of the biggest challenges facing evaluation systems is the very low rate of utilization of evaluations.  In many cases evaluation findings do not reach many of the key organizations and groups (including community and women’s organizations), in other cases they are not presented in a form which is easily accessible to some groups, particularly the most vulnerable.  Even when evaluations are reviewed, action is often not taken on many of the recommendations.  These challenges are likely to be even more serious for social equity and gender equality as these themes are less familiar to many organizations and the mechanisms to review and action are often less developed.

 

Participants are invited to share their thoughts and experiences on the following questions (as well as others they propose) as they relate to equity focused and gender-responsive evaluation.

• In your experience what are the factors affecting the demand for and use of evaluation?
• Are there additional factors affecting the demand and utilization of social equity and gender equality evaluations?
• How could the demand and utilization of these evaluations be increased?
• What types of evaluation presentations would you propose to make evaluation more accessible to stakeholders?

 

 

 

[Isha Wedasinghe Miranda]

Dear  Valerie 

I am interest to know further on this. how dose it work within the government sector. at the end  of  the day it is the government responsibility to maintain this Data.

bring this mechanism is really good . need your help on the explanation.

Thank isha 

[Valerie Karr]

Dear Isha,

Thank you for this question. This comes up a lot with our geocoding work and we take a two-pronged strategy. Governments typically have some form of information management system, such as an aid management system, into which development partners report on assistance and projects. I think it would be great to work with interested governments to help them process the backlog of projects in their aid information management systems to be coded using our schema. At the same time, we should also work with individual development partners and other relevant organizations who are interested in seeing what this looks like for their entire aid portfolio across all countries. Another approach could be working towards some international standard that could be incorporated either from the perspective of aid reporting (e.g., OECD, IATI) or national statistics (e.g., national statistical commissions and/or the UNSTATS division).

My best,

Valerie

[Rituu B Nanda]

Hi Valerie,

I am about to do summary of responses. Would you have any document to share? Should we include your response in Theme 1 or theme 3 of the query. Thanks for responding to this practical question.

Rituu

[Ranjani K.Murthy]

Dear All 

I want to respond to theme 1- measurement metrics. 

After rapport building I would like to first gather an open ended perception of women, men and elderly (separately) on what has changed over 15 years (SDG period) on Gender and equity issues - what has improved and what has not, for whom, and why. This could set the broad canvas. See http://gendereval.ning.com/profiles/blogs/power-institutions-and-ge... for an example 

Then taking each SDG 5 target the process could be repeated. I feel indicators may be too many and tire community women, men, and elderly. It is important to identify critical pathways through which change is happening (positive and negative) so that they can be captured.

This exercise could be done in groups and individually- atleast 30 each. Individual road maps should ideally be carried out with diverse women.  Findings could be quantified and analysed.

Best

RanjaniK.Murthy 

  

[Kim Titcombe]

I would like to respond to theme 1 put forward for this debate. I am concerned with the over emphasis (by all of us, institutions and individuals alike) placed on ‘measurables’ to the neglect of observing small, incremental, but nonetheless positive, impacts that fall below the radar. As Dunstan (17/2) observes, government M &E is focused on compliance [with procedures] where civil servants are rewarded for such rather than on achievements in impacts of social equity and gender equality – things that make a difference in people’s lives.Making a small difference in people’s lives is often hard to measure as we all know - subtle and not- so-visible changes can evolve for example in intra-household power relations (e.g. decision making) due to external impulses (SDG 5.4 touches on this). Intra-household dynamics are hard to monitor, let alone measure, not fitting easily into standard metric approaches, being more suited to other, predominantly qualitative, research methods (such as grounded theory). Nonetheless, baseline studies conducted with reliable indicators are going to continue to be critical in the pursuit of the SDGs as before with the MDGs. Baseline studies and needs analyses guiding strategies and policies designed for meeting the challenges of the SDGs need to be supported by sound statistical approaches where called for. For this, donor support will continue to play an important role in developing the capacity of national statistics offices and to adopt international standards. Scientific approaches are important, apart from many other reasons, to ensure that the experiment (e.g. introducing an intervention) as a pilot can be replicated and introduced into a full-scale program if the desired impact is achieved.
In summary, in my humble opinion, on the topic of measurement against performance and the achievement of goals, the areas where gender must be included as a cross-cutting theme, such as SDGs 11 (11.2) and 6 and 7, may be more important for measurement this time round than specific the specific gender-focus goal SDG 5. I would like to know what other members of this diverse forum think on this angle.

[Isha Wedasinghe Miranda]

Dear All

Measuring Data.

This is based on social gathering and discussion that I participated and gave  my views on challenges on measuring Gender Equality. The Question was raised by them was how do we measure they challanges me too. 

This is a monthly event few of us meet (scholars, academic, some of former MPS etc.) talks about informal way on various up coming events in the world and country. This was recorded by a another participant. 

You are free to comment on this.

Best Regards

Isha 

[Rituu B Nanda]

Thanks Kim for your response. would you have an example to share on small changes which fall below the radar?

Rituu

[Tina Mathur]

Dear friends,

I am writing on behalf of the Decentralization Community, Solution Exchange, UN, in India. As you are aware, this discussion was cross-posted with the Decentralization Community. I am sharing below, the responses received from the Decentralization Community members to the questions posed in this Discussion:

Saba Ishaq, Social Development Consultant, New Delhi

I would like to refer you to a very interesting journal article entitled “Enabling Spaces and Supporting Structures - Enhancing Women’s Participation in the Self-initiated Community-based Forest Management in Odisha”, by  Kanna K Siripurapu and Martha E. Geores. The article explores gender gaps in the context of Joint Forest Management. It has some very interesting insights that can be used for developing the indicators. Please see http://solutionexchange-un.net.in/ftp/decn/resource/res03021601.pdf.

Sriharini Narayanan, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

The Department of Management Studies at IIT Madras (India) is currently engaged in a systematic review that aims to study the extent to which equity, inclusion and life-cycle approach are addressed in the design, implementation, maintenance and use of programmes in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) during the Millennium Development Goal period (2000-2015). The response to this query primarily comes from our understanding of social equity and inclusion in the WASH context. However, some of the factors discussed may very well be extrapolated to other sectors covered under the SDGs.

• What are the most difficult issues to measure with respect to social equity? and with respect to gender equality? What are the special challenges for understanding the impacts of different interventions on the most vulnerable populations? 

a)    Identifying the factors that lead to social inequalities and discrimination has been one of the most difficult issues to measure with respect to social equity.  The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) background note on MDGs, Non-discrimination and Indicators in Water and Sanitation, admits that although the JMP has quantitative data that points to the socio-economic segments of population that experience obstacles in accessing WASH facilities, the global monitoring has not paid sufficient attention to the differences within societies which hinder access, such as race, gender, ethnicity or disability (Satterthwaite, 2012: pg 3). The report further adds that “axes of difference such as race, ethnicity, religion, and gender, are often avenues of discrimination and understanding them better could help reveal the dynamics leading to differential outcomes in access to water and sanitation within and across countries (Satterthwaite, 2012: pg3)”.

 

b)    Similarly, the difficulties in measuring gender inequalities lies in the fact that it is multi-dimensional. Women face several barriers that include socio-cultural practices, economic disadvantages, and psychological stress. Identifying indicators that capture all these sensitive issues within a specific context and throughout the lifespan of women is challenging.

 c)     Impact evaluation challenges: The lack a common set of indicators to measure the impact of interventions on vulnerable populations itself is a major challenge that needs to be addressed. While individual interventions may have their own indicators, there is no common platform that set out measurable standards on social equity. There is an urgent need to develop indicators that can be used across interventions and contexts that not only captures country or region specific impact (general details) but also collect nuanced details regarding factors leading to discrimination and inequality (specific details).

• What evaluation methods are most effective for studying social and gender equity? What new measurement tools and indicators can you suggest for the monitoring and evaluation of development results from equity and gender responsive perspectives?

One of the approaches to addressing the inequalities in the way different populations’ access various basic services and the socio-cultural barriers to access is by adopting a “human life-cycle approach”. Espoused by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), the human life-cycle approach believes that “all humans experience different phases in their own lifecycle, from infancy, through puberty, parenthood, illness and old age”. Human life cycle approach or life course approach (LCA) is popularly used in several disciplines such as health, social work, psychiatry, adolescent and child behaviour, violence and criminology. The basic premise of LCA is to understand the challenges and disabilities faced by people across their life-span in achieving their desired goals (Hutchinson, 2001). LCA is also a useful tool to identify the social, economic and environmental factors underlying persistent inequalities such as lack of privacy, distance to facility, affordability, ethnic differences, safety and inadequate access for the disabled (U.S. Department of Health 2010; Satterthwaite 2012).The adoption of LCA in evaluating policies and programmes provides a valuable framework to address the challenges of inequalities, inequity and exclusion.

 

Currently, we are in the process of developing these indicators on equity, inclusion and life-cycle approach with respect to WASH sector. As we progress with our research, we hope to share the indicators as well as findings of our study with a wider audience. 

Edwin M John, Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu

One of the best examples I can think of in this regard is the neighbourhood-community based approach of Kerala’s Kudumbashree programme. This is an example of a good evaluation strategy at the State level.

They began using tools that could be handled by women themselves. Even to identify who all could be the members in theses Ayalkoottams or Neighbourhood Groups, they had a set of “non-economical”, externally-observable and verifiable criteria which they called poverty-risk index.

Using the tools women themselves could identify who all needed urgent and priority attention.

The nearly two hundred and sixty thousand territorially-organized neighbourhood groups and their federation at the levels of the ward and the local governance structures like panchayats (rural local bodies) and municipalities (urban local bodies) gave them forums for discussing a wide gamut of issues that affected them and to do something about them.

They did a lot in terms of women empowerment, water management, sanitation and hygiene. The  result:  more women than men were elected at the panchayat elections and the elected are not merely namesakes for their husbands as often happens,  but people in their own right. The ongoing discussions, evaluation and involvement in issues at the level of the neighbourhood and their federations have made them confident leaders.

 

 I recommend a chapter entitled “GENDER MAINSTREAMING UNDER KUDUMBASHREE: AN ANALYSIS Available at: http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/30547/14/14_chapt.... You may also visit http://www.kudumbashree.org/?q=genderself

When the affected people are involved in evaluating in an ongoing way, the process of empowerment is focused and sustained. And the evaluation should inclusively involve all the affected. This will not achieved without forums for people themselves to come together to have a say that effectively resonates at ever wider levels.

If only other States also could go beyond mere self-help groups, and opt for territorially and inclusively organized neighbourhood-groups and their federations, it could be a beginning for gender-responsive empowerment and governance participation.

 

R.S. Mathur, Former Secretary to GoI, New Delhi

I think we need to build gender - denominated information systems/ indicators into our National Statistics Apparatus, not necessarily specific to the SDG's alone. These do not exist adequately, at least in the Indian context. I can say this with some degree of certainty as a former Secretary to Government in charge of Department of Statistics and Programme evaluation. This would need an extensive exercise in terms of evaluating the degree of gender related impact on each of the indicators measured periodically by the Statistical system. These can also be incorporated into the questionnaire for the National Sample Survey that is periodically conducted in Rounds by the National Sample Survey Organisation in India. Most of the Goals in the SDG's are covered in the Statistical data constructed through Surveys and census. This would ensure a permanent, built in framework for assessing gender-related impact of SDG's or any other Goals/Programmes formulated/committed in future too.

Ashok Malhotra, New Delhi

1. What are the most difficult issues to measure with respect to social equity? And with respect to gender equality? What are the special challenges for understanding the impacts of different interventions on the most vulnerable populations?

Despite many innovative mechanisms and systems developed in the past few decades, the most difficult issues to measure with respect to social equity and gender equality relate to “governance” of the key programmes and their timely “qualitative and quantitative progress monitoring/tracking” against agreed outcomes, outputs, targets and indicators during implementation at various levels, particularly, in a three-tier system of governance in a country like India.

Because the basic goals of growth with equity combined with self-reliance, initially evolved in the aftermath of Independence, have all along been incorporated in successive five year plans  within the broader context of achieving economic growth targets and change which is both rapid and equitable, encouraging the development of indigenous capacity and capability, meeting the critical needs of infrastructure of a large and growing economy,  facilitating the technological transformation of economic activity - which have since continued to remain the cornerstone of India’s developmental aspirations.

Even in the context of MDGs and SDGs, it is widely acknowledged that their realization rests in no small measure on “improving systems of governance” in countries with not very impressive HDIs and positive development outcomes thus establishing a clear relationship between governance and human development.  Governance indicators allow focus on core elements of governance (e.g. accountability, transparency, participation in government decision making), and other issues of gender and social equity could be linked to these core elements.  In many of these discussions at the global and national levels, cases were made for developing national indicators that go beyond aggregate indices (often used for global ranking, such as HDI), to capture the complexities of the governance processes in different countries.  Then the later part of discussions over the years shifted the focus to pro-poor orientation of governance indicators thereby making the case to evolve indicators to measure issues of poverty, gender and inclusion, and help in identifying policy priorities which are then followed by initiation of programmes and schemes by the successive governments guided by their specific agendas and priorities.

2. What evaluation methods are most effective for studying social and gender equity? What new measurement tools and indicators can you suggest for the monitoring and evaluation of development results from equity and gender responsive perspectives?

While it is most difficult to measure governance arrangements that impinge upon administering the programmes and schemes that are supposed to enable gender and social equity combined with difficulty in evolving robust system of qualitative and quantitative progress reporting/tracking at the national, state and local levels against specific indicators and targets, a few indicators that have been used in the urban governance context relate to: Input, Output, process, performance and many other indicators. Input (e.g. Size of the resources available for improvement of basic services in a Municipality or Panchayat); output (eg. Households with access to water within 200m of dwelling); performance (eg. Average time required by Municipality to process water connection; outcome (e.g. under-Five mortality rate); perception (e.g. satisfaction with transparency in access to water); and processes (eg. Involvement of civil society or men and women in a formal participatory planning and budgeting process before undertaking investment in basic services). For measure of governance arrangements, the key indicators alongwith many other used relate to: accountability, transparency and participation in decision making) rather than inputs, outputs or outcomes of these processes.

Tools are available /have been developed by UNDP that recommend a participative process for gender budgeting and for development of gender sensitive urban expenditure policy and guidelines. With adjustments these instruments can be used keeping in mind the specific programmes/schemes and contextuality Vs universality to encourage inclusion of women in planning /decision making. 

Suggested tools as also suggested by a few other members consist of

• Spatial mappings to assess access to physical, social, economic infrastructure to help develop a mix of macro and micro level plans;
• Gender profiling of public expenditures with impact assessment studies to understand gender based spending;
• Gender appraisal of programmes and schemes
• Gender based auditing

Of the several successfully tested mechanisms for identifying gender needs in planning; the two that are used most extensively and are relevant in the urban context are gender auditing and beneficiary assessments. Gender audits are critical to gender budgeting. Gender audits, according to UNDP, ‘assess the differential impacts of budgets, policies and plans on women versus men and progress towards achievement of gender equality and equity’. Gender audits help to review spending patterns of budgets and ensure gender proofing of local plans. They evaluate gender impacts of implemented projects, identify gaps in programming areas, and assess results and outcomes for women. Linked with social audits, these can help to assess if systems have been developed and institutionalized within the urban local bodies for gender and social equity.  

[Stanley Joseph]

Theme 1:  The relevance of “new metrics” (measurement tools and indicators) for the evaluation of SDGs from an equity-focused and gender-responsive perspective.

Evaluation needs to be owned by the communities.

We should focus more on how communities can be a key stakeholder while planning the evaluation and give them the ownership to decide on the indicators and tools.

Firstly, there should be a community based planning to outline what you want to achieve from the project. Only if there is engagement in the inception, there will be relevance while involving communities during evaluation. By doing this we set indicators and targets based on community expectations and aspirations.

Secondly, involve the target communities in each phase of project whether it be review or consultations.

Thirdly, consultants, donor organisations and funders need to understand the importance of community based planning before initiation of project and allocate a good budget for it.

Lastly, there should be community owned assessment process and result will be a learning for the community and it's an empowering process

Once the community started owning the project from the initial stage you the relationship will not be a top down approach which is a major barrier for the evaluation process. Finally, evaluation for whom? Dissemination for whom? and Change for whom?....

[Stanley Joseph]

Most of the evaluation tools lack gender sensitivity. Gender sensitive evaluation tools are important for any kind of social research. 

Specific focus should be given for for women in rural areas, who are less likely to have access to services and resources such as credit, land, inheritance, education, information, agriculture inputs, as well as a say in decision-making. 

In Indian context, special attention should be given to caste based gender differences and roles. From all sections, castes and classes of society, women are victim of its repressive, controlling effects. Those subjected to the heaviest burden of discrimination are from the Dalit or “Scheduled Castes”. 

In the more complex world of the present, gender sensitive evaluation should be the main focus.

[Rituu B Nanda]

Hi Stanley ,

In my work with the Constellation, we facilitate development of self assessment tool with the communities through which communities can periodically assess their own response to a problem. The external facilitators can use this process to stimulate conversation around gender and equity. 

The self assessment framework is a way for communities to create a dream for themselves and also assess how far they have come on the path of achieving the dream. It is a strengths based approach which seeks to understand  community’s aspirations and also helps them recognize their achievements and potential.  

The self assessment framework was originally developed in the context of HIV  by the Constellation. For example in a self assessment on HIV,  sometimes even the gender and age boundaries transcended, with mothers advising their sons to be safe and use condoms. In Guyana, communities developed self assessment framework on gender based violence http://aidscompetence.ning.com/profiles/blogs/competency-assessment-on It was an attempt to try to take a number of persons (particularly interested in reducing GBV and working with men & boys) through a learning and planning exercise to better respond to reducing GBV nationally.

[Stanley Joseph]

Thanks for sharing. Please share the tools and approaches.

Regards,

Stanley