Capturing Change in Women’s Realities A Critical Overview of Current Monitoring & Evaluation Frameworks and Approaches By Srilatha Batliwala Scholar Associate AWID & Alexandra Pittman Consultant AWID December 2010 Capturing Change in Women’s Realities A Critical Overview of Current Monitoring & Evaluation Frameworks and Approaches Published by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 150, Toronto, M5T 2C7, Canada. Cerrada de Mazatlan no. 12, Colonia Condesa, C.P. 06140, DF, Mexico. A6 Waverley Court, 7 Kotzee Road, Mowbray, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa. www.awid.org Copyright © Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), 2010 Authors: Srilatha Batliwala and Alexandra Pittman Edition: First Edition Design & Layout: Storm. Design + Communication Publication Coordinators: Kate Miller and Kim Sterne For permission to reprint please write to
[email protected] All rights reserved® Introduction:1 Over the past few decades, important strides have been made in developing ways to capture a whole range of abstract but vital social realities, and particularly in trying to quantify them. These efforts have been the result of the realization that we must devise ways of checking whether the policies, resources, and strategies applied towards building more equitable, sustainable, rights-affirming, inclusive and peaceful societies are working effectively or not – whether they are producing the changes we wish to see. This demands ways of measuring and tracking both the people and the processes involved in change. While the attempt to assess changes in social realities certainly has been a positive development, measurement has become something of a power unto itself in modern times.