Spectacles for Seeing Gender

in Project Evaluation
Sara Hlupekile Longwe

Introduction

In designing the gender evaluation for a particular project, it is not a good idea to begin by
thinking up as many evaluation questions as you can, about all aspects of the project, and all
aspects of how the project might address gender issues. If you do this, you will find there is
potentially an endless list of questions that might be asked, and you cant ask all of them. This
is not sociological research, this is project evaluation!
It is a worse mistake to begin by trying to pick questions from somebody elses standard
checklist of evaluation questions and indicators. Such a general checklist is also potentially
endless, and has the added problem of being generalised to all possible projects, and therefore
not contextualised to your particular project. However, a checklist of general question can be
useful in opening your eyes to the many different sorts of question that might be asked.
What you need to do is to focus your evaluation on the few priority questions which are
essential for your purpose of improving the projects ability to recognise and address gender
issues.
But on what basis do you prioritise? What are the criteria for the selection? This is the
problem with which you should begin your evaluation design. This is the problem you need to
solve before you begin to formulate specific evaluation questions, or identify indicators.
So the key word here is focus. Opening up yards of possible questions, and miles of possible
indicators, will cause loss of focus, with more work and less results. No given methodology
can find your focus for you. But methodology can provide you with the means by which you
find your own priority evaluation purpose and questions.
The key to finding the focus is to be found in conceptualising the evaluation task in terms of
analytical frameworks. These frameworks provide an overall map of the problem area, which
enables you to find your way around, and to recognise the key area or areas that should be the
focus of your attention.
Our analytical frameworks are also our spectacles, which allow us to see aspects of the
problem that we would not otherwise have seen, and to focus on particularly important
aspects of the problem. More specifically, we need our analytical spectacles to differentiate
between different aspects of the project, different types of evaluation question, and different
aspects of gender issues. When we have acquired our spectacles in these three different areas,
then we shall be equipped to find our focus.
The purpose of this paper is to provide these spectacles.
2

A Lens for Looking at Evaluation Design

The first lens in our spectacles comes in the form of an analytical framework to unpack the
logic of evaluation design, which can be summarised in terms of a simple sequence:
Evaluation Sequence
Project Context
Problem to be Evaluated
Purpose of Evaluation
Evaluation Questions
Evaluation Method
Indicators
Evaluation Outcomes
Evaluation Findings
The most important thing to notice about this list is that evaluation questions and indicators
come way down the list. We cannot begin at either of these levels, because each step is a
selection stage, where there are various issues which the evaluation might concerns itself
with, and we have to select our priority or priorities (hopefully the former). We are planning
an evaluation exercise, and planning is, by its very nature, a matter of making choices.
Planning means deciding to do things, and by the same token deciding not to do other
things. If we could do everything, we wouldnt need to plan!
Let us look in a little more detail at each step in the sequence:
Project Context. Here we look at the Project Plan, its intentions, and its current progress (if
implementation has begun). Here we look at the gender issues that the project intended to
address, intended gender outcomes, and so on. Here we select our gender interest for the
evaluation. What is the main gender purpose of this project? Or what should have been the
main gender purpose of this project? But this central focus can only arise from our gender
analysis of the project, involving a proper identification and analysis of the relevant gender
issues. Frameworks to assist both these types of analysis are provided in this paper.
If the original Project Plan was well written, it will already include an identification of gender
issues to be addressed, gender objectives, and a system of monitoring and evaluation which
includes methods for monitoring progress on achieving gender objectives. In the real world,
all this was probably missing, and our job is now to try to insert all this at a later stage.
Evaluation Problem. From our consideration of the context, we select and formulate the
specific problem or problems (hopefully the former) which should be the focus of our
evaluation. It the original Project Plan included a clear gender objective, then the problem
may be to find out whether this objective was achieved. For instance, it may have been a
project objective to promote north-south networking between womens organisations for
better collective action on addressing issues of gender discrimination. Then our evaluation
problem would be to find out how far this objective has been achieved. More likely the
problem arises from what is missing, e.g. How can this project contribute to better north-south
co-operation between womens organisation, even though this was not an original objective of
the project?
Purpose of Evaluation. From the identification of the problem, our evaluation purpose is to
solve the problem. Here we select from amongst possible evaluation objectives, to write a
specific evaluation objective, or specific objectives. For example, has the website provided a
useful meeting place for north and south womens organisations to exchange information on

gender discrimination, and strategies of action to overcome such discrimination? What factors
have stood in the way this? What ideas do gender activists have for making the website more
useful to them?
Evaluation Questions. The above purpose automatically gives rise to a lot of specific
questions we would like answered. For example, how many radical womens organisations
are using the website? Frequency of new postings? Frequency of hits? Disaggregation by
north/south? Evidence of information leading to action? Evidence of strategy development?
Evidence of outcomes? Suggestions for better design of the website for promoting action on
gender discrimination? And so on. What are the priority questions? Can we select the essential
questions?
Evaluation Method. This is not a Ph.D thesis. Mostly we need data that can be easily collected
from existing data, or from the data of routine project operations. This has to be born in mind
when selecting questions, methods and indicators. It is no good formulating a question that
demands a research project bigger than the original project. Ideally, if well designed, the
project monitoring system will already be routinely picking up data that can be turned to our
purpose of gender evaluation. Or we may now need to turn the project in this direction. It is
better if our methods are adaptive, non-intrusive, inexpensive, cost-effective, especially by
piggy-backing on existing systems, or even on the present project.
Indicators. An indicator is a well specified category of information, especially in terms of the
type of measure, e.g proportion of males to females, number of hits on a website per day,
frequency of mention of gender issues on a website, frequency of mention of womens
empowerment issues, etc. But sometimes, if we look at the data easily available, we can select
some questions on the basis that we can easily answer them. But an indicator must describe a
type of information, or a specific measure, that can provide the information to answer a given
question But dont let the evaluation tail wag the evaluation dog, i.e. dont first find an
indicator, and then start wondering what might be the question that would be answered by this
indicator!
Evaluation Outcomes. This means the accumulation, collating and analysis of the data to
come to a conclusion on the answer to each evaluation question. Data that doesnt lead to this
end was not worth collecting, and is certainly not worth reporting, unless you expect to be
given a medal for wasting your time. Evaluation outcomes are particularly useful when they
reveal project shortcomings, and are suggestive for project improvement. But for end-ofproject evaluation, evaluation findings merely enable us to be wiser next time!
Evaluation Findings and Recommendations. On the basis of the outcomes, the evaluators
should be able to write a brief account of the overall pattern and meaning of the findings,
which then lead into recommendations (for better gender orientation of the project). Make
sure all your recommendations are actually based on the findings!
But the above process of designing a gender evaluation presupposes an understanding of the
place of gender (or the lack of it) in the overall project design, as the basis for making
decisions on which part of the project, and which gender issue, should provide the focus of
evaluation interest. This paper therefore now moves to an explanation of the logic of project
design, with special attention to the place of gender issues within a project plan.
3

A Lens for Looking at a Project Plan

Before evaluating a project, you need to be able to find your way around the different
aspects of a project. Your evaluation is likely to focus on only one aspect or element
of the project, depending on where the gender deficiencies mostly lie, and depending
on the stage of implementation of the project.
We need to look at project plan through the lens of planning logic. Ideally a
development project should present itself as a rational argument, pursued by logical
connections along the following sequence:
Elements of a Project Plan
Situation Analysis
Policy Imperatives
Problem Identification
Formulation of Goals
Intervention Strategies
Implementation Strategies
Objectives
Implementation Sequence
Project Outcomes
Management System
System of Monitoring and Evaluation
As you read through a project plan, you may find yourself coming across this sequence of
headings in the text, or similar headings. If the text that the text does not reveal this sort of
sequence, then it is probably an inadequate plan. (For example, it is common for people to
decide that a particular project intervention is a good thing, without any adequate
background rationale on why it is a good thing, which problems it will solve, or whether these
same problems could be solved by more appropriate or effective interventions).
In the above sequence, it is common for a projects interest in gender issues to be either
entirely missing from the above sequence, or otherwise to fade away as the programme
document proceeds from Situation Analysis in the direction of Implementation and
Management. Therefore, it is important that gender orientation should be found at the
beginning of a project plan, and that this interest should be properly and rationally maintained
throughout the planning and implementing sequence, without fading away or suddenly
disappearing.
We shall now look at the above elements of the of a project plan, with a view to explicating
the planning sequence, and at the same time seeing how gender issues go missing, or
otherwise fade away.
Situation Analysis refers to the initial review of the situation in the area that is of interest to
the plan, particularly to mention the various problem situations that might need to be
addressed by the plan. This Situation Analysis should therefore include a description of any
relevant gender issues, perhaps to be picked up in the subsequent Problem Identification.
Lack of identification of gender issues at this preliminary stage is therefore an important
evaluation finding.
Policy Imperatives refer to those aspects of the policy environment that are relevant when
deciding what to do about the given situation. If the organisation, planning and
implementation of the project are guided by a clear gender policy, then we are entitled to

expect that the policys principles and goals are realised in the projects intention to recognise
and address gender issues.
Problem Identification. In terms of formal planning logic, no situation can be said to present a
problem unless there are policy principles that dictate which aspects of the situation are
unacceptable. It is these unacceptable aspects that present the problems on which action must
be taken. Despite this formal logic, many problems are identified as obvious, and may
indeed be so. But the obvious aspects of problem identification tend to be notably missing in
the area of gender. Whereas many ordinary problems are obvious without recourse to
looking at the policy, gender issues tend to get overlooked, along with the gender policy itself.
Gender issues may be overlooked in plans that take a purely technical perspective. They may
be overlooked where the vocabulary is gender neutral, in terms of people, farmers, target
group, beneficiaries, and so on, which provide an easy formula for gender blind treatment
of development issues. Most of all, gender issues are likely to be overlooked by male planners
who are definitely not interested in recognizing or addressing issues of gender inequality.
Formulation of Goals should follow naturally from problem identification, where a goal may
be summarised as an expressed intention to address a problem, perhaps with a statement of
intended quantified outcomes, to be achieved in a specified time. In terms of gender issues,
the goal should simply state the intention to address and eliminate the gender issue, for
instance by ending a discriminatory practice, and by closing a gender gap. However, it is
common to find that although a project plan has recognised gender issues in the Situation
Analysis and in the Problem Identification, there are no proposed goals to address these
issues!
Intervention Strategies. The logic in moving from goal to intervention strategy is that the
chosen intervention, in order to be effective, must tackle one or more of the underlying causes
of the given problem. But with poor planning, the intervention is merely considered to be a
good thing to do, without any established causal connection with the original problem. In
the case of gender issues, we should expect that an intervention strategy must be effective by
addressing the underlying causes of the gender issue, and feasible in terms of previous
experience, and in terms of anticipating, countering or bypassing patriarchal opposition.
Strategies of information, communication and mobilization can never be good strategies in
themselves, but need to be justified in terms of achieving goals, and addressing underlying
causes (e.g. Is lack of information actually a root cause of the problem being addressed? Or is
it merely a symptom of a larger underlying problem?). For gender orientation, strategies need
to be justified by their contribution to the process of womens empowerment, as a means
towards addressing gender issues. (Conversely, women should not be the passive recipients of
information, distributed from an information center that imagines it knows best. Such
processes may be disempowering).
Implementation Strategies. It is often useful to distinguish between the higher level
intervention strategy and the lower level implementation strategies. There may be many
different alternative strategies for the implementation of any given intervention strategy. For
example, the goal of increasing womens access to agricultural information may be achieved
by the intervention strategy of increasing access to the internet. This may be achieved by
various alternative implementation strategies, such as making computers available to womens
NGOs and CBOs, providing computer training, having a trained computer expert act for
farmers in a resource centre, and so on. For gender orientation, the appropriateness of an
information strategy needs to be assessed partly by its effectiveness in distributing
information, and partly by its effectiveness in promoting the larger process of womens
empowerment.

Objectives are the expression of the more specific and more detailed intention of
implementation purpose, especially in terms of activities and intended outcomes. Very often
an implementation strategy is not properly identified or even justified, but may be deduced by
its being implicit within a list of objectives. In the area of gender, project objectives typically
do not show any intention to address gender issues. If a planner or project manager is
challenged on why the goals and objectives are gender blind, it is common (in this authors
experience) to get the response that our project is very gender oriented, because our staff are
all very gender aware, and our implementation is gender sensitive. Such an answer, which is
infuriating and useless, may arise from ignorance or dishonesty. The plain truth of the matter
is that the gender orientation of programmes is about recognizing and addressing gender
issues. The intention to do so must be clearly made explicit in the goals and objectives, and in
the description of the implementation process. Even then, it is very difficult to push
implementing agencies to actually do the job, because they prefer an easy life, and do not
wish to get implicated in upsetting the existing patriarchal social order.
A gender oriented objective may be an outcome objective, concerned with closing gender
gaps, or ending a discriminatory practice. Or a gender-oriented objective may be a process
objective, concerned with the activities and social process by which the outcome is to be
achieved. The process of womens empowerment is just as important as the resulting
outcomes in closing gender gaps. Even if womens collective action fails to make much
progress in closing a gender gap, women of the community have learnt much from the process
of mobilisation around gender issues. This may be even more important than the material
results, because even if they failed this time, they may have learned enough to succeed next
time! Empowerment is a cumulative process!
Outcomes. Here we look for the outcomes of the project intervention, in terms of such matters
as increased women using he internet, increased networking between womens groups, actions
taken to address gender issues, evidence of closing of gender gaps. One evaluation difficulty
here is that it is always impossible to prove that a particular outcome is the result of the
project intervention, and not partly or entirely the result of other intervening factors. However,
to find a positive outcome is nonetheless pleasing! From an evaluation point of view, the main
point here is that it is pointless to go looking for an outcome on addressing a gender issue, if
there was no project goal or intervention directed at this purpose. (You are doing project
evaluation, not sociological research). If there is no gender oriented goal in the project, then
this is your evaluation finding. The resulting action should be to modify the project to
incorporate the required gender goal and appropriate intervention.
Management System. Our interest here is to ensure that the management system includes
proper mechanisms for ensuring that the projects gender oriented interventions are actually
implemented. For instance, it maybe necessary for management to include a Gender Officer,
perhaps to work through a Gender Committee. However, it is pointless to worry about lack of
management capacity to address gender issues if the project does not have gender oriented
goals and intervention strategies! Here we may consider the internal gender orientation of
management, in terms of such matters as gender parity in numbers, of the proportion of
women in the decision making process. But we should be more interested in the external
gender orientation of management, in terms of its knowledge, skills, commitment and
organisation to effectively recognise and formulate gender oriented goals, encourage others to
do so, and lead the implementation of action to address gender issues.
Monitoring and Evaluation. Our interest here is that the system of M&E should include the
routinely asked questions, and collection of the necessary data according to well defined

indicators, to monitor progress and outcomes in addressing gender issues. Often the
measuring of progress, in terms of monitoring the stages of implementation, is the most
important aspect of M&E. Your gender evaluation may be used to establish a system for
monitoring the implementation of the gender component of the project. This system should
then be incorporated and mainstreamed within the projects regular internal M&E procedures.
However, once again, there must first be gender oriented goals and interventions, otherwise
you will have nothing to monitor!
There is one catch in all of the above advice on the gender orientation of a project. We have
referred to gender issues, and action to address gender issues, without sufficient explication of
what is involved. We also need analytical frameworks which explicate the different elements
which enable us to define a gender issue, analyse and gender issue, and understand the actionoriented process of womens empowerment for addressing gender issues. These analytical
aspects are dealt with in the following Sections 5, 6, and 7.
But first we shall pause to consider the different categories of evaluation question which
might be asked.
4

A Lens for Looking at Evaluation Questions

Our spectacles also need a lens for seeing the different types of question which might be used in
an evaluation. A common system of categorisation of questions is to use the following five
headings:
Types of Evaluation Question
Appropriateness
Adequacy
Progress
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Appropriateness. This is the most basic question that can be asked about any aspect of a project.
It is the question of rightness, or relevance. For example, we might ask whether a project
objective is in line with policy principles. We might ask whether a project intervention is
relevant, as a means to achieving any of the given project objectives.
Adequacy. Once we have satisfied ourselves about questions of appropriateness, we are then in a
position to ask whether a particular aspect of a project is adequate, in terms of whether it is
sufficient, or whether enough is being done. For example, in looking at a particular project
activity, we might ask whether this activity represents a sufficient response to the imperatives
stated in project objectives. An activity may be appropriate, but is it adequate? The activity may
be necessary, but is it sufficient? What other activities are also necessary in order to address the
objective?
Progress. When we look at project implementation, we would want to see if sufficient progress is
being made. The question of progress is the question of whether the project is being implemented
in a timely sequence, in order to meet targets and complete the project on schedule. Therefore the
question of progress combines the question of adequacy with the measure of time, and asks the
question of whether there is adequate effort over time. In designing the methods for project

monitoring and evaluation, as part of a project plan, questions of monitoring progress are likely
to be centrally important.
Effectiveness. This is the question of whether the project is effective in getting the intended
results. At its most basic, there is the question of whether the project is producing the outcomes
and benefits which were intended, as expressed in the project objectives. If a project is effective
in this basic sense, then the further question may arise of whether the most effective methods
were employed to achieve these outcomes.
Efficiency. This question goes one stage further than the question of effectiveness, to ask the
question of whether project outcomes were obtained with a minimum use of resources. At its
most basic level, lack of efficiency is revealed by waste, and use of unproductive methods. A
more quantifiable system of measuring efficiency is cost effectiveness, the assessment of
whether project results were achieved by the least cost method. An even more quantifiable
system for measuring efficiency is cost benefit analysis, which measures the value of project
outcomes as a rate of return on project costs.
The above definitions reveal the inter-connections between the five types of question, as a logical
sequence. In other words, each prior type of question is also logically prior. For example, in
looking at a particular project activity, the question of appropriateness needs to be settled before
questions of adequacy are asked. It is no use asking whether progress is being made in
implementing an activity if this activity is not appropriate as a means for pursuing project
objectives.
Similarly, it is simply a waste of time to go looking for the outcomes from a project activity if it
can be shown that the activity is so inappropriate that there is no rational expectation of the
intended outcomes. Very often a project is so lacking in its intention to address gender issues,
that evaluation findings show that the project falls down at the level of appropriateness. This
would be so if the project fails to recognise gender issues, or fails to formulate gender oriented
goals. Intervention strategies are inappropriate is they do not address the intended goal, e.g. by
failing to tackle the underlying causes of a gender issue. Where a project falls down at the level
of appropriateness, it is a waste of time to ask the subordinate type of question. For example, it is
no use asking whether an intervention is effective in terms of outcomes if the intervention was
demonstrably inappropriate in the first place.
The above five types of question are also related the stage of project implementation. If a project
exists as a plan, but implementation has not begun, then the type of evaluation may be called a
project appraisal. Here the main questions are in terms of appropriateness and adequacy.
If a project is at the implementation stage, then the main questions should be of adequacy and
progress, and the type of evaluation may be a mid-term review, or the continuous monitoring and
evaluation.
If implementation of a project is now complete, then the main questions should be of
effectiveness and efficiency, looking at the outputs and outcomes, and even impact and side
effects. This sort of evaluation is called an end-of-project evaluation. Here the lessons from the
evaluation are obviously only useful for designing future projects better, since the it is now to
late to modify the project being evaluated.

A Lens for Recognising a Gender Issue

Does the project recognise gender issues? Before we can answer this question, we obviously
need a lens which enable us to see what is a gender issue, and what is not.
Here our lens enables us to distinguish between different types of gender-related problems,
where a gender issue is categorised as the most severe type of gender problem. With an agreed
categorisation of gender problems, we can distinguish one type from the other, and also had
an agreed vocabulary for discussing the problem area.
If we wear good spectacles, we shall properly equipped to recognise the whole picture of the
different types of gender problems, and their levels of severity:
Levels of Severity of Gender Problems
General Development Needs
Womens Special Needs
Gender Concerns
Gender Inequality
Gender Issues
General Development Needs are here defined as those needs which affect women and men
equally, so there is no sex or gender difference. This is the zero level for seriousness of gender
problems. It is often claimed that such matters as the need for roads, transport, or water are
general development needs. But given the severe gender differentiation and division of social
and economic roles in most societies, it is doubtful whether any needs, with the possible
exception of the need for air, can properly be put in the category of a general development
need. Nonetheless, it may be said that some needs are more general than others, where gender
differentiation and discrimination are less severe. For example, perhaps roads are more of a
general need, by comparison with land. In Africa, access to land is an area where women have
a much greater need, being the majority amongst farmers and food producers, but at the same
time this is an area where women are severely discriminated against.
Women Special Needs are here defined as those needs that arise from biological or sex
differences. Of course these may be serious problems in the general sense, but they are not in
themselves gender problems. Obvious examples are the need for maternity hospitals, antenatal care facilities, and so on. But most childcare facilities are not in this category, because
womens childcare responsibilities arise mostly from the gender division of labour rather than
biologically given roles. (Of course gender problems may arise out of womens special needs,
for instance where male control of the government budget leads to lack of funding for
maternity hospitals).
Gender Concerns are those needs that arise because of the gender division of economic and
social roles. Therefore examples of womens gender concerns arise from their more domestic
location and their concern with child care and food production and preparation. Typically, too,
women are more dependent on the natural environment, and with gathering of food and
medicines from natural vegetation or forests. For this reason, too, women and men have a
very different perspective on development problems, as well as a different identification of
problems that need to be addressed. A development project may adjust to gender concerns.
But gender issues need to be addressed.
Gender Inequality is a more severe type of gender problem, because here the gender concern
is also overlaid with gender inequality, typically because women have less access to facilities,
opportunities and resources. Because of this inequality in present systems of allocation,

women have a greater need. Gender equality is here defined as a gender concern which also
brings with it inequality in allocations and opportunities.
A Gender Issue arises when people recognise that a particular instance of inequality is wrong,
unacceptable and unjust. This realisation is more likely where the gender gap is large, and
where women are aware of their democratic and human rights. (It needs hardly be said that in
the very patriarchal states of Africa, most gender injustice is perpetrated against women,
rather than the other way round.). Of course, from a purely moral standpoint, it might be said
that gender inequality is always unjust, and therefore an issue. But at the same time, it is
difficult in political practice to make an issue of gender inequality if there is not a wide
perception that this inequality is unjust.
If your project recognises and addresses gender problems, are these the important and more
serious issues, or has the project gone for the lesser problem of adjusting to gender role
differentiation, rather than tackling gender discrimination? So the above list enables you to
gain a clear focus of interest on the type of gender problems which should be the focus for
your evaluation. Hopefully, you will want your focus to be on the more serious issues, for
instance on whether the project is assisting in tackling gender issues, rather than merely
disseminating information on gender concerns.
But if a project is to tackle serious gender issues, then we need to understand the dimensions
of a gender issue. It is to this question which this paper now turns.
6

A Lens for Analysing a Gender Issue

Our spectacles also need a lens which enable us to see a gender issue in terms of underlying
causes, because addressing an issue means tackling its underlying causes, and not merely its
surface effects.
Ideally, we should expect that the Situation Analysis and Problem Identification parts of a
project plan should identify the underlying causes of a particular gender issue. We should
expect that an intervention strategy is appropriate to the extent that it is directed at tackling
these underlying causes.
Here it is suggested that the following headings provides a useful framework when looking
around for the underlying causes of a gender issue:
Underlying Causes of a Gender Issue
Gender Gap
Gender Discrimination
Patriarchal Control
Patriarchal Belief
Coercion
Gender Gap is the observable (and often measurable) gap between women and men on some
important socio-economic indicator (e.g. ownership of property, access to land, enrolment at
school), which is seen to be unjust, and therefore presents the clear empirical evidence of the
existence of a gender issue.
Gender Discrimination is the different treatment that causes a gender gap. A gender gap is
never accidental, but is caused by differential gender treatment. In a patriarchal society, this is

almost always the different treatment given to girls and women that cuts them off from access
to opportunities, facilities and resources. Such discriminatory treatment may be part of social
custom, or may be entrenched in government administrative rules and regulations, and even in
statutory law. Even when residing in religious practice or custom, these discriminatory
practices may well have the status of law in many countries.
Patriarchal Control is the system of male monopoly or domination of decision making
positions, at all levels of governance, which is used to maintain male dominance and gender
discrimination (for the continued privilege of males).
Patriarchal Belief is the system of belief that serves to legitimise male domination and gender
discrimination. Typically it relies on patriarchal interpretations of biblical/religious texts,
beliefs in male biological superiority (sexism), entailing claims that the unequal gender
division of rights and duties is either natural (biological), or God-given, or too difficult to
change (claimed to be hopelessly and irretrievably embedded in culture!).
Coercion is even more ugly side of male domination, relying on violence against women to
keep them in their place. Such violence may be domestic, or institutionalised within schools,
police, army, etc. Where womens acceptance of patriarchal belief begins to waver, physical
and sexual violence is the fallback method for control and subjugation.
But if we are to tackle these underlying causes, then we must understand the process womens
empowerment by which gender issues can be recognised and addressed. If a project is to be
action-oriented on gender issues, we should expect that it incorporates and enables the process
of womens empowerment within its intervention strategy.
But if we are to evaluate a projects contribution to the process of womens empowerment,
then we need to understand what is entailed in this process. It is to this question which this
paper now turns.
7

A Lens for Seeing the Process of Womens Empowerment

A focus of evaluation interest might arise from the general question of whether a project is
merely disseminating information on gender issues, or whether it is also a contributing to the
process of womens empowerment. But do we sufficiently understand this process, and how
information systems can contribute to this process? Or are we going to naively assume that
women are automatically empowered by being better informed?
Given the dimensions of a gender issue, and their obvious embeddedness within a patriarchal
system, it becomes obvious that interventions on gender issues cannot be dictated by topdown planners. On the contrary, womens advancement involves the process of
empowerment, which we may give the preliminary definition of the process by which women
achieve increased control over public decision making. Such empowerment is womens route
to changing the practices and laws that discriminate against them, and achieving an equitable
gender division of labour and allocation of resources.
The male domination of decision making is preserved by men for the purpose of serving male
interests, where women are given most of the work, and men collect most of the rewards.
Where men have a vested interest in the continued subordination of women, it would clearly
be folly for women to expect male leaders to suddenly realise the value of gender equality,
and to give women an equal share of the cake. Past experience already provides plenty of

evidence that men do not give power to women. It is axiomatic in gender politics, as in all
politics, that power is never given; it has to be taken.
Clearly, therefore, we need to a lens to see the process of empowerment, as the sequence of
womens action by which a gender issue can be tackled. It is here suggested that this process
of empowerment may be better understood in terms of the following five levels of a
Womens Empowerment Framework:
The Five Levels of the Womens Empowerment Framework1
Welfare
Access
Conscientisation
Mobilisation
Control
Welfare is here defined as the lowest level at which a development intervention may hope to
close a gender gap. By welfare we here mean an improvement in socio-economic status, such
as improved nutritional status, shelter, or income. But if an intervention is confined to this
welfare level, then we are here talking about women being given these benefits, rather than
producing or acquiring such benefits for themselves. This is therefore the zero level of
empowerment, where women are the passive recipients of benefits that are given from on
high.
Access is here defined as the first level of empowerment, since women improve their own
status, relative to men, by their own work and organisation arising from increased access to
resources. For example, women farmers may improve their production and general welfare by
increased access to water, to land, to the market, to skills training, or to information. But were
they given information considered appropriate by higher authorities? Or did they increase
their own access? If the latter, then this suggests the beginning of a process of conscientisation
of recognising and analysing their own problems, and taking action to solve them.
Conscientisation is defined as the process by which women realise that their lack of status and
welfare, relative to men, is not due to their own lack of ability, organisation or effort. It
involves the realisation that womens relative lack of access to resources actually arises from
the discriminatory practices and rules that give priority access and control to men.
Conscientisation is therefore concerned with a collective urge to action to remove one or more
of the discriminatory practices that impede womens access to resources. It is here that we see
the potential for strategies of improved information and communication, as a means for
enabling the process of conscientisation, but driven by womens own need to understand the
underlying causes of their problems, and to identify strategies for action. Where many women
accept patriarchal norms, the leadership of more liberated and activist women is essential at
this essential phase of fomenting dissatisfaction with the established patriarchal order.
Mobilisation is therefore the action level which complements conscientisation. Firstly it
involves womens coming together for the recognition and analysis of problems, the
identification of strategies to overcome discriminatory practices, and collective action to
remove these practices. Here communication may not be merely concerned with the
mobilisation of the group, but also to connect up with the larger womens movement, to learn
from the successes of womens similar strategic action elsewhere, and to link up with the
1

This Womens Empowerment Framework was first introduced in Sara Longwe, Gender Awareness: The
Missing Element in the Third World Development Project in Candida March and Tina Wallace (Eds), 1995,
Changing Perception: New Writings on Gender and Development, Oxfam, Oxford.

wider struggle. Here communication entails joining the global sisterhood in the struggle for
equal rights for women.
Control is the level that is reached when women have taken action so that there is gender
equality in decisions making over access to resources, so that women achieve direct control
over their access to resources. They have taken what is rightly theirs, and no longer wait
indefinitely to be given resources merely at the discretion of men, or by the whim of
patriarchal authority. Here the role of information and communication is to spread the word
on the development of successful strategies. For example, in the widows struggle to retain
title to her property after the death of her husband, strategies developed by women in Zambia
may be equally useful, or open to adaptation, in all the countries of Southern and Eastern
Africa.
Therefore these five levels are not really a linear progression, as written above, but rather
circular: the achievement of womens increased control, leads into better access to resources,
and therefore improved socio-economic status.
In evaluating a project, we need to ask ourselves whether the project is intervening merely at
the level of providing improved welfare, and access to information. Or is it enabling womens
participation in a process for increased conscientization and mobilisation, as a means for
increased action and control?
In making an appraisal of a project plan, the evaluator can often see the phenomenon of fadeaway in the projects attention to gender issue. In other words, gender issues appear quite
prominent in the Situation Analysis, but gradually fade away as the text progress towards
goals, intervention strategies and objectives. This fade away may also be seen in terms of the
Womens Empowerment Framework. It is quite common that the Situation Analysis boldly
admits gender issues at the level of gender discrimination and womens lack of participation
in decision making. But as the plan progresses towards describing the interventions, the
vocabulary fades away towards matters of welfare and access to factors of production. The
evaluator may find it useful to use the above framework to draw a gender profile of the
project, assessing each element of the project plan in terms of its level of attention to womens
empowerment. Of course the point where the plan fades away is a crucial point for the
evaluators interest, and a crucial point for project reformulation.
Project implementation also provides another opportunity for fade away. It may be that the
project plan provides quite bold interventions for womens empowerment, but the
management chooses to re-interpret this in a top-down manner, concerning themselves with
watered down interventions at the level of welfare and access.
Conclusion: Use Your Spectacles Find Your Evaluation Focus
The above frameworks demonstrate that there are potentially an endless number of questions
which could be asked, about every aspect and corner of the project, even for our restricted
interest in the projects gender orientation. From this point of view the evaluators task may
now seem to be more confusing.
But think of the frameworks as lenses in a pair of spectacles (just as an optician adds more
lenses into trial spectacles, enabling your world to come into better and better focus).
Similarly in this paper, each framework provides an additional lens that brings into view an

additional aspect of the project evaluation, enabling you to build up well focused priorities for
your gender evaluation.
Using your different lenses, you now have a pair of spectacles which enable you to focus on
the:
weakest aspects of the project, where gender issues go missing;
types of evaluation questions needed to look at weal aspects of the project;
more severe or crucial gender issues which the project needs to address;
important underlying causes which need to be addressed;
aspects of womens empowerment to which the project can contribute.
With your new spectacles, you are now able to focus on the evaluation problem and priorities.
After that, you are in a position to begin formulating your essential evaluation questions, your
indicators, and your methods for collecting the essential information.
So, before you do anything, dont forget to put on your spectacles!

Sara Hlupekile Longwe

Gender Consultant
16 November 2002