Toolkit for Gender Sensitive Participatory Evaluations - Part I (Overview)

[Shraddha Chigateri]

We at the Institute of Social Studies Trust invited Ranjani Murthy, feminist researcher and evaluator, to our workshop to share the participatory evaluaution tools that she uses when she conducts evaluations. While many of these tools are used in participatory research and evaluations, our interest in these tools was to understand how these tools maybe used for gender sensitive and feminist evaluations. We are pleased to share with you the edited videos of the training Ranjani conducted with us. We are sharing this in four parts.

The first is an overview of the various participatory tools used in gender sensitive and equity focused evaluations. The second, third and fourth videos demonstrate three tools in particular- power walk, resource mapping and body mapping. We are grateful to both Ranjani Murthy and to all our workshop participants for their contribution. We invite your reflections on the following:

• How useful do you think this video is? How would you use the tools talked of here?
• What is your experience of using similar / other tools to conduct evaluations before? Can you kindly share the tools and your experience in using them?
• Have you used these or similar tools to conduct gender sensitive, equity focused/feminist evaluations? Do you have any modifications to suggest from your experiences?

 

[Pramod Sharma]

Ranjani, In addition, I think we need to discuss more practical issue related to participatory methods. for example, if a researcher is inexperience can start with easy topics and over the period of time she/he can take some complicated topics. Easy topics may be hand washing, food habits, or similar...and when researcher get experienced can play with complicated topics.

[Ranjani K.Murthy]

Dear Rituu

I do agree that meeting other family members helps in gender-sensitive participatory evaluations. They should be met separately.

When their view points contradict we should give more importance to what the women say, and avoid bringing all members together to come to a consensus.  

best

Ranjani 

[Rituu B Nanda]

Dear Ranjani,

My experience too is similar to Mr Bhabatosh and yours- engaging the family is critical if we want to bring about a change. 

Also in participatory approaches creating an enabling, judgmental environment is key if we want communities to share.

One resource which I found useful in overview of gender and participatoy practices is from IDS.

Gender and Participation: Supporting Resources Collection

http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/go/bridge-publications/cutting-edge-pac...

 By directing practitioners to useful information sources and examples on gender and participatory approaches, the Supporting Resources Collection seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how gender sensitive, participatory development has been and can be achieved. This collection also aims to support the work of busy gender and non-gender specialists, especially those in operational positions with direct responsibility for programme design, implementation and management. We hope this collection will encourage collaboration, networking and pooling of resources.

[Ranjani K.Murthy]

Dear Bhabatosh, Shanta and Pramod

Thanks so much for your comments. 

Bhabatosh- agree that 'in laws' that it is important to examine if the relationship of women with in-laws have changed towards greater equality.  I would add if the principle stakeholder is an adolescent girl relations with parents and brothers are important to examine.

Yes Pramod- your input on group size is very important. Too big a group is not good, too small does not give much inputs. I think group size should also vary with what is being discussed.

Shanta- time and resource intensity are constraints. One has to be strategic based on the context.

cheers

Ranjani

 

 

[Bhabatosh Nath]

Dear Sraddha,

Thank you so much for sharing this toolkit. As you mentioned in your video discussion, YES, I fully agree that WOMEN HAVE THEIR OWN INDICATORS, and for designing participatory gender aware method, these indicators are truly the basic ingredients of such evaluation method. 

I think we should target the 'FAMILY' as the 'UNIT' of our study. Regarding 'selection of women' (as you mentioned) in the participatory methods, it is very important for the evaluators to select the appropriate respondents. We all know that in this subcontinent the role of 'In-laws' (mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother and sister-in-laws) is very vital to change a life of a woman who becomes the part of a family after her marriage in that family. But we in many cases ignore the 'in-laws' to take into consideration to take them as 'stakeholders'/ beneficiaries of a project or to consider them as the respondents of an evaluation  study, in particular. So I think we should work with the in-laws to really reduce the women violence  and to establish gender equity at family level. For 'Gender sensitive participatory evaluation' we should not ignore the men and especially the 'in-laws' to select them to design the participatory method and also to take them as  respondents of the study. 

These are all for now.

Live well.

With warmest regards,

Bhabatosh NATH

[Shanta Laxmi Shrestha]

Great! How to overcome the challenges  -resource intensity, time taking etc. -of participatory gender evaluation? This question remains a challenge .

[Pramod Sharma]

This is a wonderful idea to share such video. A very good learning. I was regular part of participatory research in villages (not exactly on in depth gender issues) . I just wanted to add specially in Indian condition (where population is more). group size should be appropriate, which can be handled by the researcher (ideal size could be in between 3-14). if the people are more then they can be divided in more groups, for more convenient discussion. two people from researcher side is always good in unfamiliar places. good homework is always help. The other thing is many people can't express in the groups. so a personal discussion can also help.
Case studies can also help in the participatory research. Thanks for such a lovely platform.