Meta-Evaluation Component of the Women’s EmpowermentStrategic Impact Inquiry

PurposeTo learn what if anything CARE project evaluations can tell us about our analysis, approaches, and impacts around women’s empowerment and gender inequity

MethodConvenience sample of 35 evaluation documents culled from a larger meta-evaluation exercise. Multiple volunteer analysts recruited. Individual analyses then synthesized by a single person.

How Focused on Women’s Empowerment or Gender Inequity?

Very Low: Women/gender not in project goals/objectives, not in target groups, results not disaggregated by gender.Low: women/gender might be mentioned in goals/objectives, or as a broad guiding or cross-cutting theme, but this is not followed through with regarding specific targets, approaches, activities, disaggregation of indicators, etc.Moderate: women are specifically singled out in objectives, activities, strategies, and targets, and M&E data allow tracking of project effects on women. Lacking are any indications of gender analysis, power analysis, a focus on changing structural/relational aspects of gender inequity. WID would qualify, in my rating scheme, as a Moderate.High: Meets all the criteria in the “Moderate” rating but goes beyond with gender/power analysis and questions of structural/relational aspects of gender inequity central.

Scale

Very Low/Low: 12Medium: 13High: 6

Start Date End Date Durations

1996: 1 project1997: 1 project1998: 11999: 62000: 32001: 72002: 52003: 2

2002: 3 projects2003: 16 projects2004: 7

1 year: 62 years: 73 years: 44 years: 55 years: 37 years: 1

When Did the Projects Run?

Gender/Power Analytics

CAVEAT: We can only analyze what is in the document

•No project appeared to have conducted power analysis of any kind

•Four projects appeared to have done gender analysis of some kind

•In general, for the cohort of projects included in this exercise, evaluators found the conceptualization and operationalization of these crucial phenomenon – power, gender, empowerment, inequity – singularly lacking. Even where they did seem to have been important in project design and approaches, we are having trouble generally identifying even proxy measures for impacts on them, and in the vast majority of cases projects seem to be content with letting such impacts kind of hang in some imagined future

Strategies and Approaches

CAVEAT: We can only analyze what is in the document

   Twelve of the 31 projects made explicit use of women’s groups in order to increase women’s economic, social, political, family, or cultural status/influence. Of those 12, six focused on women’s community based micro finance groups, two focused on women’s networks, and the others were an array of private business or CBO entities.  •Training, broadly writ, was mentioned 27 times as a central method for improving women’s lives. •Direct action for ensuring equitable access to resources and services was mentioned 24 times.

•Inclusion/participation – ensuring that women had a seat and voice in various kinds of decision-making – was mentioned by 16 projects.

•Advocacy – of different intensities, at various levels, formal, informal, and quasi-formal – was mentioned by seven projects.

Strategies and Approaches

Agency: 93 instances Structure: 42 instancesRelational: 21 instances

AgencyConcentrated in:

Self image/esteemInformation/skillsGroup membership/activismControl of material assets

StructureConcentrated in:

Transparent information and access to servicesMarket accessibility

RelationalConcentrated in:

InterdependenceNegotiation/accommodation

Impacts

Just more than half of the projects – 16 – were found by evaluators to have had important outcomes on improving women’s positions, conditions, or the enabling environment around them.

“Agricultural production and income levels have increased in numerous sites, women have been granted permanent rights over agricultural lands/products in other sites, household divisions of labor between men and women have been changed in the favor of easing women’s workloads, women have gained greater voice/influence in household, community, and national decision making processes. Thousands of girls in these projects were able to attend primary schooling as a direct result of CARE’s work and efforts. Women have attained more equitable access to crucial livelihood services and resources – credit, employment, health, clean water, and so forth – and thousands of women have been seen to not just participate in a training (an output) but have measurably used those skills and knowledge to develop their own businesses, increase savings, put children into school, take control of their productive and reproductive lives, and learned to lobby and advocate for themselves and their peers.”

HOWEVER….

Impacts

Evaluations frequently do not quantify outcomes

Evaluations frequently do not operationalize crucial concepts, processes, phenomena, or changes

“women” often goes without disaggregation

Evaluations look hurried and underresourced

Internal/External Relationships

Six of 31 evals noted that CARE undertook internal GED work

Two of those six noted evidence that CARE’s internal work translated into external benefits for women

Seven of the 31 evals noted that the lack of internal GED work had negative effect on project success

In general, in 2002-2004, we did not appear to be doing enough to understand gender and power in local contexts, do identify concrete changes