Gender Responsive Evaluation: a Call for Action to Leave No One Behind
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ISSUE 6 / MAR 2016 The Magazine for Gender-Responsive Evaluation Gender Responsive Evaluation: A call for action to leave no one behind Gender-responsive evaluation: A key to accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals PAGE 2 Why evaluation matters for gender equality PAGE 8 Dear Readers, As we enter 2016, we also officially enter the era of the 2030 Agenda. This means we need to collectively shift from planning for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to implementing them. Evaluation, and more specifically gender-responsive evaluation, has an important role to play throughout the implementation process in ensuring that these ambitious targets are met, while Think Beyond. leaving no one behind. Stay Ahead. However, gender-responsive evaluation can only play this role if evaluators and the global evaluation community agree to integrate gender equality in their evaluations. In this issue, we EDITORS look at how global partnerships for evaluation, UN system-wide Marco Segone Shravanti Reddy coordination on evaluation and UN Women’s evaluation function Florencia Tateossian can all contribute to making this a reality. We hope you find this information useful for better understanding the importance of COPY EDITOR gender-responsive evaluation in the context of the SDGs and how Margo Alderton the UN Women Independent Evaluation Office will be working to ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS support its integration at the global, regional and national level. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Caroline Heider Colin Kirk Awuor Ponge Tessie Catsambas Jim Rugh Helen Wedgwood Kalmomas Jaiyen Simone Ellis Oluoch-Olunya Mohammad Naciri Marco Segone Director, Independent Evaluation Office ART DIRECTION & DESIGN Ultravirgo [email protected] @msegone UN WOMEN 220 East 42nd Street New York, New York 10017 [email protected] www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/evaluation Twitter: @unwomenEval UN WOMEN/RYAN BROWN UN WOMEN/RYAN © The analysis and recommendations in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of UN Women, its Executive Board or the United Nations Member States. The designations in this publication do not imply an opinion on the legal status of any country or territory, or its authorities, or the delimitation of frontiers. The text has not been edited to official THIS PAGE: BANK DEVELOPMENT ASIAN © publication standards and UN Women accepts no responsibility for error. COVER: Issue No. 6 1 March 2016 Gender Responsive Evaluation: A call for action to leave no one behind GENDER-RESPONSIVE EVALUATION A key to accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals PAGE 2 A call for action to leave no one behind PAGE 4 Transforming Why evaluation matters how we assess for gender equality progress against PAGE 8 global goals PAGE 14 EVALUATION IN Supporting UN Women UNITED NATIONS contribution to 2030 It is time for shifting Agenda: The critical role “business as usual” of the UN Women evaluation function PAGE 30 PAGE 40 Partnerships for 2030 success PAGE 22 2 GENDER-RESPONSIVE EVALUATION A key to accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals UN WOMEN / SARAH STACKE / SARAH UN WOMEN 3 By PHUMZILE MLAMBO-NGCUKA Executive Director, UN Women We kick off 2016 with a strong focus on implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We worked hard to place gender equality at the heart of this new global agenda through a standalone goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment (Goal 5) and the integration of gender equality targets within the other goals. Our focus now must be on harnessing that momentum and ensuring that we are on track to deliver on our commitments. Crucially, the 2015 reviews also slow so that we can course-correct. It showed that our monitoring and eval- will give us a better understanding uation mechanisms for the MDGs of how to overcome obstacles, while were not robust enough to alert us to identifying the ingredients that sus- the slow pace of implementation and tain gender equality and women’s the bottlenecks faced, and did not empowerment across all SDGs in the provide sufficient insight into how long-term. to overcome these barriers. At UN In addition to our internal eval- Women, we place strong emphasis uation function, UN Women also on the importance of evaluation and advocates for and supports coordina- regular reporting on results. Close tion of gender-responsive evaluation scrutiny can be uncomfortable, but within the UN system and among it is an essential aspect of well-man- national evaluation policies and aged progress. Using gender-respon- systems. This helps us all to align, sive evaluation for the SDGs gives strengthen, and prioritize all of our us the tools to monitor our commit- work, in line with supporting the ments and ensure that words be- achievement of the SDGs. come actions. We have made bold commit- We now begin SDG implementa- ments, and now is the time for tion with targets and indicators that action, implementation and evalu- are more gender-responsive and a ation. If evaluations conducted by global focus on improving national governments, UN system entities, capacities on data, statistics and eval- civil society and the private sector all uation among all stakeholders. This integrate gender equality and wom- will give us evidence-based insights en’s empowerment, together we can into what is working and raise alarm ensure that our ambitious goals be- bells when the pace of progress is too come reality. 4 A call for action to leave no one behind In 2015, the “evaluation torch” celebrating the International Year of Evaluation linked 92 events all over the world to discuss the Rebalance of Global Evaluation Agenda 2016-2020 (EvalAgenda). EvalAgenda— leadership in the officially launched at the Parliament of Nepal in November 2015 in the presence of the Nepali Prime Minister and Parliament global evaluation Speaker, 100 Parliamentarians, and 50 leaders of the evaluation community community—is a call for action to ensure evaluation is fit for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development endorsed by 193 heads of state at the UN General Assembly in September 2015. Until 15 years ago, the best national evaluation systems were in the The overriding message of the 2030 their fellow citizens. global North (i.e., the United States, Agenda for Sustainable Development At the same time, EvalAgenda the United Kingdom, and Canada). is “to leave no one behind” and to envisages that evaluation will help The big majority of voluntary orga- ensure “targets are met for all nations to raise the voice of all stakeholders nizations for professional evalu- and peoples and for all segments of that are impacted by such decisions, ation (VOPEs) were in the global society.” How can evaluation help to particularly those of the marginal- North. The demand for evaluation achieve this commitment? ized and disadvantaged. Evaluation was in the global North. Today, this The vision of the thousands should therefore be driven by values is changing dramatically. Several of evaluators who took part in the of human rights, gender equality and excellent national evaluation sys- EvalAgenda 15-month global consul- social equity. tems are in the global South (i.e., tation is that evaluation is an integral EvalAgenda, which builds on the Mexico, Colombia, Chile, South part of all efforts by governments, success of the International Year of Africa, Morocco, Benin, Kenya, civil society and the private sector to Evaluation, is further impetus to the Uganda and Malaysia). The big improve the lives and conditions of global trends described below. majority of the existing 150+ VOPEs ESTEBAN TAPELLA ESTEBAN © 5 By MARCO SEGONE Director, Independent Evaluation Office, UN Women Chair, United Nations Evaluation Group Co-founder, EvalPartners are in the global South. Regional par- In the future, demand, supply and use liamentarian forums for evaluation now exist in Asia, Africa, the Middle of evaluation will truly be universal. East and Latin America (but not in Europe or in North America). In the future, demand, supply and use of UN Women and the International A stronger evaluation will truly be universal. Organization for Cooperation in movement for Evaluation (IOCE), and whose members are the United Nations professionalizing Stronger demand Evaluation Group (UNEG), VOPEs, evaluation for evaluation, 16 UN agencies, multilateral banks and the Global Parliamentarian particularly Forum for Evaluation, is launch- The challenges noted above will equity-focused ing an inclusive process to develop accelerate the need to profession- guidance to evaluate the Sustainable alize evaluation. Several VOPEs and gender- Development Goals with an equi- (including the European Evaluation responsive ones ty-focused and gender-responsive Society, the UK Evaluation Society, lens. In the future, demand for equi- the Canadian Evaluation Society, ty-focused and gender-responsive the Japanese Evaluation Society The first ever Global Evaluation evaluation will be the norm. and the International Development Event held in a national parliament Evaluation Association), are leading is a strong signal of the new trends this process. UNEG is exploring this of policymakers’ demand for eval- Complexity area too, and UNEG members (i.e., uation. The official launch of the is the new normal UN Women and the International Global Parliamentarian Forum at Labour Organization) already the Parliament of Nepal is a clear launched professionalization ini- indication that parliamentarians are The 17 goals and 169 targets included tiatives. In the future, evaluation becoming new evaluation leaders. In in the 2030 Agenda are intercon- will become a mature profession. parallel, the strong call by the 2030 nected and synergic. While this is Agenda for Sustainable Development necessary, it also adds complexity. for leaving no one behind and, In addition, the focus on “no one accordingly, the positive response left behind” means that socio-cul- by the evaluation community with tural-political contexts, as well as equity-focused and gender-respon- power relationships, are critical to sive evaluations, is another positive evaluating sustainable and equi- development.