Bringing about social justice through feminist research for monitoring, evaluation, and learning? A conversation from Oxfam GB

ABSTRACT

At Oxfam, we have spent much of the last two years talking about feminist principles. In the context of the #Metoo and #Aidtoo movements, the presence (or absence) of these feminist values and principles is increasingly – and rightly – under the spotlight. In this article, we reflect on what it takes to embed these values in our research practice within the monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) function of an international non-government organisation such as Oxfam. These values shape our understanding of the purpose of carrying out MEL activities as a tool for bringing about social justice, through examining gender and power relations, why they exist and how they change. We reflect on the successes and challenges we have faced while utilising evaluation for greater gender equality. By doing so, we aim to start shedding light on the structural changes needed to bring about social changes through MEL, and research more broadly.

À Oxfam, nous avons consacré le plus clair des deux années passées à discuter des principes féministes. Dans le contexte des mouvements #Metoo et #Aidtoo, la présence (ou l’absence) de ces valeurs et principes féministes suscite une attention croissante - ce à juste titre. Dans cet article, nous réfléchissons à ce qui est requis pour intégrer ces valeurs dans nos pratiques de recherche dans le cadre de la fonction suivi, évaluation et apprentissage (MEL - monitoring, evaluation and learning) d’une ONG internationale comme Oxfam. Ces valeurs influencent la manière dont nous appréhendons la finalité de la réalisation d’activités de suivi, évaluation et apprentissage comme outil visant à donner lieu à la justice sociale, en examinant les relations entre les sexes et les rapports de pouvoir, pourquoi ils existent et comment ils évoluent. Nous réfléchissons aux succès remportés et aux défis que nous avons dû relever tout en utilisant l’évaluation en vue d’une plus grande égalité entre les sexes. En procédant ainsi, nous cherchons à faire la lumière sur les changements structurels requis pour donner lieu à des changements sociaux à travers le MEL, et les recherches en général.

En Oxfam hemos pasado gran parte de los últimos dos años hablando de principios feministas. En el contexto de los movimientos #Metoo y #Aidtoo, la presencia (o ausencia) de valores y principios feministas se ha convertido cada vez más, y con razón, en el centro de nuestra atención. En el presente artículo reflexionamos sobre los aspectos que es necesario atender para incorporar dichos valores a la práctica de investigación dentro de la función de monitoreo, evaluación y aprendizaje (mel) de una ong internacional como Oxfam. Estos valores moldean nuestra comprensión acerca del porqué llevamos a cabo estas actividades como una herramienta para lograr la justicia social, mediante el análisis de las relaciones de género y de poder, tratando de responder por qué existen y cómo cambian. Asimismo, deliberamos sobre los éxitos y los desafíos que enfrentamos al utilizar la evaluación para impulsar una mayor igualdad de género. En este sentido nuestro objetivo es arrojar más luz sobre los cambios estructurales que se requieren para lograr cambios sociales a través de mel e investigar de manera más amplia.

KEYWORDS:

• Monitoring
• evaluation and learning
• impact evaluation
• feminist values
• social justice
• gender and power relations
• inclusivity

Notes on contributors

Andrea Azevedo is a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEAL) adviser at Oxfam GB. She specialises in the design and implementation of MEAL strategies and frameworks in Women’s Economic Empowerment.

Rosa Wilson Garwood is currently Oxfam GB’s strategic lead for Gender Justice. Prior to this role, she was a monitoring, evaluation, and learning adviser on Gender Justice at Oxfam GB. Postal address: Oxfam GB, John Smith Drive, Oxford OX4 2JY, UK. Email: [email protected]

Alexia Pretari is a global adviser in impact evaluations at Oxfam GB. She leads the measuring resilience work for Oxfam GB, developing new tools and methods for assessing resilience capacities; she works primarily on impact evaluation design and implementation.

Notes

1 Bhavnaniet al. (2003) present the historical progression from women in development (WID) – making sure women are not invisibilised in and excluded from development processes – to gender and development (GAD) – integrating women into development, transforming inequal gender relations, and supporting empowerment processes – in the sector between the 1970s and up to the early 2000s. They also highlight the contribution of the woman and development approach (WAD), which called for the transformation of mainstream development itself, and call themselves for an approach which takes into account culture: women, culture, development (WCD). In the preface to the second edition of Feminist Futures, they highlight ‘the promise of a WCD paradigm grounded in critical development studies, an understanding of “culture” based on lived experience, and attention to the multiple roles of women in deep social transformation' (Bhavnani et al. 2016, xxiii).

2 In 2017 and 2018, reports of sexual misconduct by Oxfam staff in Haiti and elsewhere were highlighted in the media. These led to a 10-Point Action Plan to strengthen Oxfam’s safeguarding policies and practices and to transform our organisational culture. In June 2019 the Independent Commission on Sexual Misconduct, Accountability and Culture published its final report (https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/oxfam_ic_final_report-en.pdf, last checked 11 October 2019) as did the UK Charity Commission (www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-inquiry-oxfam-gb, last checked 11 October 2019).

3 Since it started its formal engagement with women and gender issues in 1984 (Wallace 1999 ), Oxfam has produced numerous resources with potential to generate evidence to inform design processes from a feminist perspective, together with guidance to plan and prepare feminist interventions in different areas. To name a few: Oxfam’s guide to feminist influencing (Safier et al. 2019), the ‘How to’ guide to measure women’s economic empowerment (Lombardini et al. 2017), the Quick Guide to Gender Analysis (Oxfam GB 2014) and the Oxfam Minimum Standards for Gender in Emergencies (Oxfam International 2013).

4 Gender & Development (Vol. 22, No. 2) includes an Introduction (Bowman and Sweetman 2014) which provides a useful summary of gender and MEL.

5 By French ‘universalism’, we mean the idea that the French Republic is one and indivisible and the belief that its values are universal, and the political use of such ideas and belief.

6 The UK Labour Party is a political party of the left, which emphasises social justice and strengthening workers’ rights.

7 For more information on WE-Care, see https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/gender-justice/womens-economic-empowerment/we-care (last checked 22 July 2019).

8 Data 2X initial assessment identifies four sources of gender data gaps: lacking coverage across countries and/or regular country production; lacking international standards to allow for comparability; lacking complexity – information across domains; lacking granularity – detailed data-sets allowing for disaggregation (www.data2x.org/what-is-gender-data/gender-data-gaps/, last checked 22 July 2019).

9 For more information, see https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-approach/monitoring-evaluation/effectiveness-reviews (last checked 22 July 2019). The Effectiveness Reviews are part of Oxfam GB’s Global Performance Framework (Hutchings 2014) through which Oxfam aims to better understand and communicate its effectiveness, as well as enhance learning across the organisation. At the time of the writing of this article, this framework has been revisited to improve the learning at an institutional level as well as to support the utilisation of effectiveness reviews and impact evaluations more broadly, as highlighted by Claire Hutchings (2014). This revisit included articulating the framework with feminist principles.

10 For more information on SenseMaker, see https://cognitive-edge.com/sensemaker/ (last checked 16 August 2019) and on its use in our resilience portfolio, see Fuller and Pretari (2018).

11 For more information, see http://weai.ifpri.info/ (last checked 22 July 2019).

12 For more on this, see a publication from Jaynie Vonk (forthcoming), part of our ‘Going Digital Series’ (available on Oxfam’s Policy and Practice website).

13 See, in particular, Lombardini and Bowman (2015). For lessons learned from this experience, see Mager (2016) .

14 Ladder of Power and Freedom is a qualitative data collection tool designed by CGIAR and GENNOVATE to understand local perceptions of agency and decision-making. The tool uses a ladder visual which depicts different levels of agency, ranging from having little power and freedom on step 1 to having power and freedom to make most major decisions on step 5 (https://repository.cimmyt.org/bitstream/handle/10883/19343/59306.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y, last checked 23 August 2019).

15 For more on the Participatory Index of Women’s Empowerment, see the blog post ‘How to measure women’s empowerment so that it reflects the views and opinions of all women interviewed in a study’ from Simone Lombardini and Nathalie Naïri Quinn which presents the methodology (https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2018/07/how-to-measure-womens-empowerment/, last checked 16 August 2019) and the impact evaluation report (Lombardini 2018).

16 The (Silent) Voices ‘Bukavu Serie’ blog posts reflect on ‘ethical issues in fieldwork in conflict and post-conflict settings, and on the place and vulnerability of the researcher in such settings. The ideas conveyed in these blog posts serve as an indictment of the premeditated violence that persists in the process of academic knowledge production. They argue that this process is, among other things, responsible for the dehumanization and the erasure of researchers from the Global South’ (available at www.gicnetwork.be/silent-voices-blog-bukavu-series-eng/). Of particular relevance to the issues we discuss in this article is the post from Christian Chiza Kashura (3 June 2019), titled ‘Hold on; we’re still thinking it through. When will we get a report on your findings?’ (see www.gicnetwork.be/hold-on-were-still-thinking-it-through-when-will-we-get-a-report-on-your-findings/, last checked 24 July 2019).

17 In addition to WE-Care, these include Gendered Enterprise and Markets (GEM) at https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/food-livelihoods/gem, Raising Her Voice at https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/the-raising-her-voice-global-programme-338444, and AMAL project at https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/womens-empowerment-in-tunisia-impact-evaluation-of-the-project-amal-supporting-620466 (all last checked 11 October 2019).

18 QCA is a case-based method which allows evaluators to identify different combinations of factors that are critical to a given outcome, in a given context. This allows for understanding of how different combinations of factors can lead to success, and the influence context can have on success (see www.adcoesao.pt/sites/default/files/avaliacao/4_2_qualitative_comparative_analysis_-_a_rigorous_qualitative_method_for_assessing_impact_junho_2015.pdf, last checked 14 August 2019).

19 The 2018 European Evaluation Society bi-annual meeting held in October 2018 had the theme, ‘Evaluation for More Resilient Societies’ (more information is available at www.ees2018.eu/). The African Evaluation Society meeting held in March 2019 was themed, ‘Accelerating African Development: Strengthening National Evaluation Ecosystems’ (more information is available at https://afrea.org/2019conference/, last checked 11 October 2019). Both events had specific strands approaching specific issues of transformative approaches, values and evaluation, and gender integration.

20 A summary on some of the discussions about incentive structure for changes in the evaluation sector towards more inclusive approaches during the 2018 European Evaluation Society meeting can be found at the blog post, ‘What does it mean to be a responsible evaluator? Five key reflections from the 13th EES Conference’, produced by our teams on the theme, available at https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2018/11/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-responsible-evaluator/ (last checked 16 August 2019).