Gender Responsive Evaluation for non-gendered Programs: Challenges of Including a Gender Lens in Evaluation Processes in India (original) (raw)
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Ratna M. Sudarshan and Rajib Nandi (eds.) Voices and Values: The Politics of Feminist Evaluation , 2018
The chapter demonstrates how applying a feminist lens to a gender-blind project to be evaluated using conventional methodologies, can nonetheless lead to transforming the project design towards a gender-aware and responsive approach. The essay examines the evaluation of a mobile phone based free voice message service for farmers in rural India. The objective of the programme was to empower farmers and their families by disseminating timely information regarding agriculture and rural livelihoods, including health and education messages. The service provider disseminated five different pre-recorded voice messages every day in local languages. The author conducted an evaluation of the programme in two states. After a primary reading of the programme documents and through a series of conversations with the programme implementers it emerged that the programme was highly gender non-responsive and non-inclusive as far as women and other disadvantaged groups and small cultivators are concerned. However, the evaluation was able to demonstrate that some of the programme assumptions were not valid. The evaluation was able to offer specific recommendations regarding programme design, which was not part of the original TOR, and but were well received by the implementing agency.
Evaluation Journal of Australiasia, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, 2015
This article describes an interesting approach where the evaluators recognised the value of using local community knowledge and experience in evaluating a Government of India program for the development and empowerment of adolescent girls. The evaluators tried to integrate participatory and appreciative approaches and looked at the evaluation process through a gender and equity lens. The evaluators went beyond the mandate of evaluation and focused on building evaluation capacity by fostering ownership of the program among stakeholders and encouraging the community to be the active agents of change. Instead of traditional evaluation where evaluators are outsiders, we engaged the stakeholders in the evaluation. All the stakeholders, including the funding agency, NGO, the adolescent girls and the larger community were engaged in varying degrees—from defining the objectives, designing questions, data collection and data analysis in the context of their aspirations and expectations, so that it could be an occasion for recognition and celebration of their strengths. The local project implementers and the adolescent girls themselves re-evaluated their own responses and used them in a particular context to further empower themselves. We used principles of the strength-based approach and framed appreciative questions, which recognised the strengths of the community and NGO staff. This created a non-threatening environment, which stimulated open sharing of experiences. Further, this resulted in reinforcing the evaluation process by improving the quality and richness of data that the community produced itself, which would not have been the case in a traditional evaluation. Additionally, a gender and equity lens was used to conduct the evaluation in six multi-ethnic districts, populated with religious and linguistic minorities, and an indigenous population. The gender and equity lens allows recognising the systematic discrimination based on gender, caste and class. The evaluation was able to probe whether the program assessed time, mobility, poverty and accessibility constraints of girls, and accounted for intersectional discrimination.
in communication of agricultural information for rural development among women in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Note: It was a research-type project that was implemented in 2003. Visit to the site was not possible largely due to logistical issues. Kiplang'at moved to Moi University in Kenya. Instead, a face-to-face interview was conducted by the evaluator when he was in South Africa for an event in September 2006. The impression was that Kiplang'at saw his project more as purely research than application 8 and so there was no direct participation by women. It also seemed as if Kiplang'at had "moved on" from the time he first implemented and completed the research. Kiplang'at never completed or submitted the questionnaire despite reminders sent.
GENDER AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGY FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN INDIA
Gender equality and Communication are closely linked dimensions for rural development. Integrating gender with communication can speed up rural transformation. In spite of the implementation of several programmes, the rural India is characterized with gender discrimination, unemployment and poverty. Rural people are still unaware of the provisions of the ongoing schemes and their rights. With that view, the present research has been undertaken to study the importance of gender and communication in rural development by considering MGNREGA. The study was conducted in two districts of Odisha named Mayurbhanj and Jharsuguda. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the respondents and the total sample size was 380 including 228 beneficiaries and 152 non-beneficiaries. Under social impact factor, decreased gender discrimination and facilities for women empowerment explained 27.21% variance in the data. The overall impact was more in Mayurbhanj district than that of Jharsuguda district. The mean rank and agreement coefficients were high for friends and local leaders in Mayurbhanj district, whereas in case of Jharsuguda district, it was high for stakeholders and local leaders. Maximum respondents suggested that periodical meetings should be conducted with the stakeholders to share and exchange information about MGNREGA and broadcasting of information should be done through radio, television etc.
2014
In July 2010, the UN Fund for Gender Equality awarded an implementation grant for “Facilitating Women in Four Endemic Poverty States of India to Access, Actualize and Sustain Provisions of Women Empowerment.” With this support, PRADAN and Jagori, two leading national civil society organizations in India, in their respective fields of rural development and deepening feminist consciousness through leadership development and training, initiated the Gender Equality Program (GEP). The four-year GEP partnership between PRADAN and Jagori has not only transformed the lives of rural women, but also transformed the professional perspectives and personal lives of PRADAN professionals at the frontlines of this initiative. These personal and professional transformations have, in turn, precipitated shifts in PRADAN’s institutional mission and vision, organizational culture, program priorities and day-to-day policies and practices. This research is not about outcomes but about process. It seeks to document how PRADAN and Jagori implemented the GEP, the opportunities and challenges they confronted in doing so, and the change that had to occur at personal, professional and institutional levels—including in project implementation, organizational structures, policies, monitoring and evaluation. The experience of PRADAN professionals engaged in the GEP—a majority of whom are men from technical backgrounds—has important lessons for emerging conversations on masculinity and the critical roles men can play in the struggle for gender justice. This qualitative research used a participatory and consultative approach. The research team conducted more than 70 individual interviews with PRADAN professionals, PRADAN national and state leadership, Jagori Director, Suneeta Dhar, and Jagori staff engaged with the GEP. The team also conducted a total of 24 group discussions with PRADAN teams at each of the program sites, gender core team members and management; Jagori resource people; and women engaged with the GEP program at the community level, including Community Resource Persons (CRPs). Interviews and group discussions took place in Delhi, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. Interviews and group discussions were conducted in English, Bengali or Hindi.
Agricultural Gender Indicators to Improve Development Programs: A Critical Approach
2014
The use of indicators as tools to summarise large amounts of data, providing information as comprehensive as possible about a particular phenomenon, it is largely shared by the academic world. Nevertheless, it may be noted how the supply and the availability of gender indicators, applied to the specific framework of natural resources and agriculture, are very limited, especially in developing countries. This research would therefore analyse this lack, focusing on the importance of identifying gender indicators in rural settings of these Regions, comparable over time and space. Gender indicators in agricultural developing contexts can have multiple purposes: they can be a methodological resource for the comparative analysis of gender in the stages of feasibility, monitoring and evaluation of cooperation projects, focused in rural-agricultural issues, as well as having an impact on national agricultural policies, lobbying and advocacy. For this reason, in a general turmoil context lik...