Engendering USAID Evaluations

Abstract

Giving voice and agency to women and girls around the world has been a stated priority of the international community for a half a century. And even as the intent is prominently interwoven through the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, a cursory review of the status on progress is sobering as women and girls around the world continue to face pervasive inequities (UN Women, 2018b). Feminist sociologists have argued that to understand the root causes of this seemingly un-addressable challenge, one must discard the notion that gender is equivalent to biological sex. Instead, gender is to be understood as a social construct, a relational social process that results in a hierarchy where that which is feminine is placed towards the bottom. This hierarchy, reinforced with spoken and unspoken gendered cultural norms, dictates access (or lack-there-of) to power, resources, ability to make decision, and yes, have a voice. Official development assistance (ODA) holds the promise of delivering transformational change towards meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest contributor of ODA. In recent years, USAID has issued a number of policy and guidance documents related to female empowerment and gender equality. Yet, to date there has not been a comprehensive assessment of the state of practice of gender mainstreaming across USAID programming, and specifically the state of engenderment of USAID evaluations – the key mechanism to assess whether intended results were in fact realized. My research addresses this gap by conducting a meta-evaluation of USAID evaluations published in 2019. Research questions and associated hypotheses were focused on engenderment qualities of evaluations and their statements of work. Hypotheses were tested via a criteria matrix developed and applied by a single coder. Descriptive statistical methods were then employed to analyze the results of the coding in excel. The hypothesis that most evaluations do not present sex-disaggregated findings across all person-level results was supported, as less than a third of evaluations presented such findings. Although the hypothesis purporting that most evaluations did not discuss gender differential effects was refuted, the majority of these discussions were found to be anecdotal. The hypothesis that the majority of evaluations do not reference male roles or masculinity was supported, as 95% of the evaluations lacked any mention of male roles or masculinity, with only 46% mentioning men at all. Additionally, although women represented the minority on 43% of the evaluation teams (refuting a key hypothesis), projects focused on sectors commonly deemed less relevant to women (e.g., economic growth, energy and infrastructure) were more often staffed with all male teams. Applying the Gender Equality Continuum categorization to the sample revealed that 66% of evaluations were gender blind or accommodated gender norms and dynamics that retain women and girls at an inferior status. Resulting recommendations for USAID include strengthening focus on transformation of processes, relationships, and social norms that perpetuate a hierarchy that places women towards the bottom, instead of the current focus on female participation. As well, USAID should explicitly address men and social norms of masculinity, and require a system-informed approach where layers of the enabling environment surrounding women and girls are intentionally engaged.