GENDER: A QUALITY CHALLENGE FOR THE 2030 EVALUATION AGENDA

[Silvia Salinas Mulder]

The Sustainable Development Goals represent an ambitious development agenda towards the year 2030.  Monitoring and evaluation will play a central role in ensuring and supporting effective compromise and implementation at country level.  This major challenge also represents an opportunity to overcome gender blindness in evaluations that perpetuates and even reinforces gender inequalities. Reducing gender gaps is not only a matter of justice, but a key factor to boost development, productivity and poverty reduction.

The launch of Evalgender+ in Katmandu inspired a group of women from different Spanish-speaking countries to produce a DECALOGUE OF EVALUATION FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE.  This Decalogue offers input to include a gender perspective in evaluations and to help avoid the evaporation and technocratization of gender issues in the policy and practice of evaluation.

We are pleased to share the Decalogue with the EvalGender+ community and invite all to give us your feedback and comments.

This is a contribution by:

Fabiola Amariles and Silvia Salinas (LA&C Network of Women in Management REDWIM),

Julia Espinosa and María Bustelo (Gender Group of European Evaluation Society EES),

Alejandra Faúndez and Marisa Weinstein (Gender, Evaluation and Human Rights group of LA&C Network of Evaluation ReLAC).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#1 It recognizes and values the political dimension of evaluation as a means of transforming gender inequalities. Gender in evaluation is also important in terms of social justice for those who are most disadvantaged, contributing to their visibility and empowerment.

#2 It assumes that policies and programmes, as well as their evaluation, are not gender neutral. Rather, they tend to reproduce structural inequalities if they do not explicitly promote the eradication thereof.

#3 It can be applied to all kinds of policies and programmes, whether or not these focus on gender. The overarching concern is the evaluative approach, not the content to be evaluated.

#4 It goes beyond the disaggregation of data by sex. It implies questioning power relations between the genders and focuses on structural gender inequalities. It requires the analysis of results achieved as well as the processes implemented.

The adoption of a gender perspective in evaluation constitutes a quality criterion of the practice of evaluation.

#5 It implies a holistic approach: one which looks at people, organizations/institutions and their environments.

#6 It considers the creation of participatory and collaborative spaces, as well as horizontal work to build collective knowledge and empowerment, thus overcoming the asymmetric power relations which exist in the practice of evaluation.

#7 It focuses not only on accountability and the improvement of programmes, but also on learning and advocacy with a view to transforming gender inequalities.

#8 It generates analysis, conclusions, recommendations and lessons learned which serve to promote changes in gender roles and relations.

#9 It adopts and adapts gender analysis tools, while using relevant methodologies which respect local contexts, languages and the cultural characteristics of communities. It also depends upon professionals, both women and men, specialized in a gender equality approach.

#10 It analyses how gender inequality intersects with other inequalities, depending on the context in question and the sector in which the intervention takes place.

[Carol Miller]

Thanks for this analysis and call to action! What next in terms of the evaluation challenge for the SGDs?

[Silvia Salinas Mulder]

Thank you all for your comments and feedback!

[Rukmini Panda]

Thanks for sharing. Rightly mentioned, questioning poer relationship and analyzing intersection of other factors are essential pointers for evaluation.

best,

Rukmini

[Farai Magombedze]

These are great observations stated with simplicity. Thank you ladies! Reading through the Decalogue, it becomes clear that purely quantitative evaluation approaches will almost always fail to address some questions that are critical to evaluation from a gender perspective. It sounds like evaluation from a gender perspective is a field more suited to mixed approaches.