- Evaluation methods
- Evaluation process
- Gender
- Humanitarian
- Monitoring & Evaluation
- Participatory approaches
For decades, evaluation has played a pivotal role in measuring progress toward gender equality. Yet despite global commitments, policies, and programmes aimed to advance the rights of women and girls, the progress remains uneven and, in some contexts, has stalled or even reversed.
This raises an important question: Are we evaluating gender equality in ways that adequately reflect the lived realities of the people most affected by inequality?
Many gender-focused evaluations are still shaped by approaches that often treat women and marginalised groups as beneficiaries, respondents, or data points rather than as knowledge holders and active agents of change. While these approaches may be well-intentioned, they can unintentionally overlook the deeper systems of power that shape people’s lives and experiences. As a result, evaluation can sometimes tell us whether change occurred without helping us understand why change was possible, whose interests were served, or who was left behind.
A forthcoming article co-authored with colleagues from across the Global South, we explore this question through a feminist lens. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East, we challenge conventional assumptions about gender-focused evaluation and examine how power, participation, knowledge, and transformation are understood in different contexts.
A central argument of our article is that gender work in the Global South cannot be separated from the historical and structural forces that shape it. Colonial legacies, patriarchy, and entrenched social hierarchies continue to influence whose voices are heard, whose opportunities are expanded, and whose experiences remain invisible. Any evaluation that overlooks these realities risks producing an incomplete picture of change.
Rather than treating gender as a simple variable to be measured, the article argues that gender-transformative evaluation requires a deeper understanding of the systems, structures, and relationships that shape people's lives.
Too often, gender-focused evaluations address issues such as power, participation, ethics, and inclusion in isolation and in a piecemeal manner. Our article, therefore, responds to this gap by proposing a more comprehensive Global South decolonised framework that brings these interconnected dimensions together. Designed to help evaluators and commissioners think differently about gender, power, and social justice, it draws on Global South experiences and seeks to move beyond tokenistic inclusion toward more meaningful and transformative evaluation practice.
The proposed approach is grounded in five interconnected areas:
Power, Intersectionality, Inclusion and Representation, Methodological Approaches, and Ethics.
Rather than offering a rigid model, it serves as a practical guide for evaluators to think more critically about whose knowledge is valued, how evidence is generated, and how evaluation processes can either reinforce or challenge existing inequalities. At its core, the framework encourages more contextually grounded, participatory, and justice-orientated approaches to evaluation.
The article also draws on a range of real-world examples that illustrate how evaluators are experimenting with new approaches to understanding complex issues such as social norms, accountability, participation, and power. These examples offer practical insights for evaluators seeking to strengthen practice in ways that are more equitable, contextually grounded, and responsive to the realities of diverse communities.
At a time when the evaluation field is increasingly grappling with questions of decolonisation, inclusion, and systems transformation, Global South feminist perspectives offer an important opportunity to rethink not only what we evaluate, but how and for whom evaluation is conducted. This conversation feels more important than ever.
We hope this work contributes to the ongoing discussions about gender justice and social transformation by encouraging evaluators to reflect more critically on how evaluation can support more equitable forms of change.
I look forward to continuing this conversation with colleagues and practitioners as these discussions evolve.
Details of the Article :
Title: Evaluation from a Gender Lens-Foregrounding Global South Reflections and Experiences
Co-Authors: Sonal Zaveri, Amrita Gupta, Sibongile Sithole, Silvia Salinas Mulder, Anuradha Chatterjee & Shyam Singh
Expected Date of Publishing: August 2026 by JMDE