The ‘Problem’ of Gender and Development Evaluation in the Pacific

Abstract

Gender equality is generally accepted within the international development community as being critical for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed to by member nations of the United Nations in 2000. However, this article suggests that there are tensions between the MDGs and the strategies to achieve gender equality on the one hand, and international development policies, such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), on the other. Furthermore, rather than gender equality being central to achieving the MDGs it appears that since the Paris Declaration, gender equality has ‘dropped off’ the mainstream international development agenda.

This article reviews the policy and practices of NZAID (New Zealand's international aid and development agency) to help illustrate the difficulty of keeping a focus on gender within the current international development policy context. The impact of this issue on the effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA) in helping to achieve the MDGs in the Pacific is examined, as are the implications for evaluative policy and practice of a weakened focus on gender. In conclusion, it is suggested that, although evaluators do not set the development agenda of either aid agencies or developing countries, it is still possible to conduct evaluations that are ‘gender sensitive’ and that have the potential to transform gender relations of those women and men that development assistance is intended to benefit.