Towards Gender Equality through Equity in Community-Level Evaluation

Abstract

The calls by donors for gender equality to be an outcome of community development projects, locally and internationally, have been a constant for many years. While gender equality is not normally an explicit requirement of community-level evaluations, it should be. However, entrenched social and religious mores and economic systems have most often proved too difficult to change and gender equality remains a challenge.

When it comes to the evaluation of community development projects, most donors and practitioners call for participatory evaluations to ensure that real input into evaluation findings is obtained from those most affected by the development intervention. However, gender equality in evaluation is faced with the same barriers as in development—the gendered barriers to participation.

Gender equality means equal access, equal value, equal numbers and equal rights in participation in the activities. But the barriers to participation are most often the result of the gendered nature of society. These barriers include literacy, time availability, the timing of an activity, public standing and access. Common participatory practices, such as surveys, focus group discussions and positivist approaches, do not break down these barriers. While this situation is very often the case in developing countries, it is also seen as an issue in Australia's multicultural society, in particular among recent refugee groups.

This article highlights that participation, together with gender equity (as distinct from equality), in the design, implementation and monitoring of an evaluation is also a requirement for ensuring gender equality in the outputs of evaluations. The article focuses on the importance of the informants’ understanding of what is being evaluated, and minimising the impact of barriers in ensuring gender equity (that is, fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs), so that all voices are heard. Tools and approaches that bring fairness and justice to participatory evaluation can help to ensure gender equality in the findings, conclusions and resultant recommendations of communitylevel evaluations.