Indigenous mothers and poverty: applying a gender lens to impact evaluation

[Margerit Roger]

Hello, 

I'm writing from Winnipeg, Canada where I'm doing a social impact case study with three Indigenous moms who are receiving enlightened, progressive, Indigenous-run support (resources, information, systems navigation assistance) to help them through a difficult time. 

I'm using social impact methodology (i.e. looking at the social ripple effect of the support into families, communities, and systems) to describe the preventative power (and hence financial value/cost-savings) of the support and interventions. The SROI-style argument is very frustrating to me, but it's the mindset we currently have in our province ... everything is about making a business case.

However, it's so painfully clear to me that the issues these mothers are facing are women's issues. Mother's issues. Indigenous mother's issues. Poor Indigenous mothers' issues. You get the picture. The evaluation environment (making a business case) assumes that the best "currency" is money and not children's well-being, family strength, community health, etc. These mothers would and do absolutely disagree with the business-based currency.What matters to them (i.e. what is "material" in a participatory evaluation) is not valued by the funder.

I can sell out by describing the impact in monetary terms (cost-saving for children not apprehended by our child welfare agency) but I'd rather provoke a deeper discussion because gender, race, poverty, AND the effects of colonization are being fore-grounded by this evaluation. This particular expression of racism, poverty and need is not replicated elsewhere in Canada ... not even in situations involving single Indigenous fathers. 

Can anyone point me in the direction of academic research that looks at poverty, gender and evaluation in the context of colonization?

Thanks, 

Margerit