A document containing insights for donors to strengthen monitoring and evaluation for women’s rights was published by Association For Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). The document, authored by Srilatha Batliwala, provides twelve specific insights for developing more effective M&E systems for people who are working for women’s rights.
The document draws upon the extensive research conducted by AWID, from 2009 to 2010; this research primarily focused on challenges faced while monitoring and evaluation the development of women’s rights work. The research was conducted through surveys, interviews, and discussions, along with desk and internet research of secondary resources. The present insights have been developed after careful and comprehensive assessment and evaluation of challenges faced by organizations and networks that received the MDG3 Fund grants.
The document containing these insights can prove to be quite helpful to donors who are engaged in women’s rights work, as these insights help develop more effective systems for monitoring and evaluating the work done towards gaining gender equality and empowerment of women. These insights are presented in the document under the following headings:
- Make M&E a learning partnership, not a performance test
- Approaches that include multiple M&E frameworks / tools / methods are more effective
- Balance quantitative and qualitative assessment techniques
- Legitimize and value participatory approaches
- Track & assess reversals or even success in failure
- Approaches that assess contribution to change are better than attribution-based frameworks
- Make M&E systems flexible and adaptable
- Design M&E to suit organizational architecture
- Factor in organizational capacity when designing M&E
- Invest resources in developing M&E capacity
- Tailor indicators and results to time frames
- Invest in the creation of baselines
You can download the document from this link.
