Meta-Evaluation on Women's Empowerment

  • Objective: To know if a specific type of interventions have led to women’s empowerment, and how much and to understand how an initiative has changed over time.
  • Materials/Preparation: Project evaluations and other related documents for a specific initiative or approach.
  • Participants: CARE staff from across the organization (senior management, technical assistants in monitoring and evaluation as well as other staff).

Steps

To launch the process, the research team goes through an extensive orientation to gain a better understanding of women’s empowerment, CARE’s framework for women’s empowerment and a discussion of women’s empowerment indicators within the local context, based on former exercises within communities. As part of this process, the team develops a number of questions to be answered by the study. Examples may be:
  • What is CARE’s influence on the VSLs?
  • What is the VSL’s influence on CARE?
  • What is the contribution of CARE to poverty reduction?
  • What is the impact of VSLs on women’s empowerment?

From these discussions, the team identifies documents for review based on discussion sessions on the SII and the history of the initiative/approach. For the team in Niger, the team decided to review project evaluations, Household Livelihood Security assessment reports and ethnographic research reports.

The team then identifies indicators and levels of empowerment to which they related, based on the framework and project inquiries around empowerment. Based on this discussion, the team develops a framework that included indicators from both national projects and CARE’s Women’s Empowerment framework. Indicators are organized in terms of:

  • Agency
  • Structures
  • Relations

For the study, the research teams review the evolution of the project as well as some key themes emerging from the Women’s Empowerment Strategic Impact Inquiry. Researchers then split into sub-reading groups where each participant read at least one evaluation, and each evaluation was read by at least two people.

Guiding their reflection during this review are the questions developed previously, as well as two more key questions:

  • What factors facilitated impacts?  What are the main findings regarding empowerment impacts?  How are these influenced by different project strategies, approaches, or synergies?  What intervening variables might be at work ?
  • How do women define and understand empowerment?

After two readers review a single evaluation, they discuss its contents around the questions and synthesized their results. In clusters, small groups then meet to synthesize results across a cluster of documents. Once all project documents have been reviewed, the group assembles to synthesize results of all project documents as a team. In plenary, each group presents its results, followed by further discussion and analysis.

The results of the research are documented and further reflection and discussion on findings can take place through workshops with staff and other key stakeholders.

Related Tools

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Resources

  • CARE Niger (2006). Strategic Impact Inquiry Research CARE Niger: Meta-Evaluation of a decade of VSL.
  • K Glenzer and J Rugh (2005). Women’s Empowerment Strategic Impact Inquiry Meta-Evaluation Analytic Guide. CARE USA.
  • K Glenzer (2005). Starter Kit for Conducting a Desk Review. CARE USA.
  • D Koenig (2006) Meta-Evaluation: Mata Masu Dubara Projects in CARE Niger. CARE Niger.
  • SII Global Advisory Committee (2005) CARE Niger Strategic Impact Inquiry Phase I: Preliminary Plans from CARE SII Global Advisory Committee. CARE USA.