'Engendering Meta-Evaluations : Towards Women's Empowerment' - Series in Feminist Evaluation-2

Feminist evaluation, as an approach to evaluation that exposes and critically assesses gender and other sources of inequalities, is a new and emerging field in India. Over the last several years, responding to the increased attention given to evaluation in policy circles, there has been a concerted effort by social science researchers, evaluators, and funders to build the field of feminist evaluation (Hay, 2010). In August 2010, the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, organised a workshop on Gender and Participatory Evaluation in New Delhi to reflect on the possible role of feminist evaluation in engendering policy and supporting changes that lead to gender equality along different dimensions. The workshop brought together a group of feminist/ gender responsive equality advocates who, as social science researchers, had carried out evaluations but had not had the opportunity to reflect on the role of these evaluations within their larger research agendas. This initial gathering, and the discussions it generated, led to the publication of a special issue on ‘Evaluating Gender and Equity’ in the Indian Journal of Gender Studies in June 2012, the first collation of articles to examine the field of gender responsive/feminist evaluation in India. Simultaneously, ISST, in conversation with IDRC and the Ford Foundation, developed a proposal with the aim of building the field of feminist evaluation through a focus on generating research on and building capacities in feminist evaluation. The project, ‘Engendering Policy through Evaluation: Uncovering Exclusion, Challenging Inequities and Building Capacities’, which began in October 2012, was a result of these concerted efforts