Integrating Gender into Project-Level Evaluations - Main Report

Published by: The Evaluation Cooperation Group

The ECG Reference Document, Integrating Gender into Project-level Evaluations, provides practical approaches for Independent Evaluation Offices (IEOs) of multilateral development institutions to strengthen the treatment of gender equality and women's empowerment in their evaluation programs, and more specifically in evaluations of projects. It is intended for three main audiences:

Staff who are relatively new to development evaluation, and particularly to gender evaluation;
Staff with more experience in development evaluation as well as gender evaluation; and
Managers who must lead the gender evaluations.

Recognizing the different levels of evaluation experience, the document is structured to provide guidance on both basic Gender Responsive Evaluation (GRE) tools and techniques required to cover the minimum requirements for incorporating gender into standard IEO evaluations; and to present more advanced tools and methods for evaluations where resources, time and management interest require the application of more advanced methods of GRE. A separate chapter is included on the management of gender evaluations as the evaluation manager plays an important role in: ensuring the gender-focused evaluation questions are aligned with agency priorities, that support and cooperation of operations staff and senior IEO management is assured and that the evaluation teams are able to work effectively with the new disciplines and approaches that might be required for the gender evaluations.

Chapter Overview

Chapter 1 - Addressing gender within the broader independent evaluation framework
Chapter 2 Deciding which project-level evaluations should address gender and defining gender-focused questions to be addressed
Chapter 3 - Designing gender-responsive evaluations at the project level
Chapter 4- Tools for collecting data for gender-responsive evaluations
Chapter 5 - Managing gender evaluations

This main document is accompanied by two separate documents:

1. Case Studies illustrating the application of the recommended GRE design framework

Example of a GRE design matrix: Evaluating a hypothetical African groundnut infrastructure development project with defined gender objectives.
Evaluating women's empowerment in a hypothetical Village Development Project.
Assessing secondary and tertiary gender outcomes: A Public Transport Project in Eurasia

2. Appendixes

Appendix 1: The rationale for integrating gender into project and program evaluations
Appendix 2: The special challenges of gender evaluation within the IEO context
Appendix 3: Overview of GRE Evaluation Designs
Appendix 4: Tools for collecting data for gender evaluations
Appendix 5: A data collection planning matrix for a GRE: Application to a hypothetical Village Development Project in Central Asia
Appendix 6: Example of a GRE design matrix: Evaluating a hypothetical village development project with defined gender objectives in Central Asia
Appendix 7: Example of a GRE design matrix: Evaluating a hypothetical public transport project in Eurasia with defined gender objectives
Appendix 8: Links to the gender indexes
Appendix 9: Strengthening the dissemination and use of gender-evaluation findings