Summary: Of Structures and Scraped Coconuts: Findings from the MetaEvaluation Component of the Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment
A meta-evaluation is basically a comparison of a large group of evaluations. CARE
looked at 31 evaluations of CARE projects that have empowerment of women as one of
their objectives, to try and answer four questions:
1. How are the conceptualizations of power, empowerment, gender and gender
inequity being used in CARE projects?
2. Who are CARE projects targeting and how are they trying to do it?
3. Is CARE’s work making any difference in women’s empowerment or gender
inequity?
4. What is the relationship between gender equity and diversity within the CARE
organization itself and externally within CARE programs?
The 31 evaluations had a wide range of program focus, including reproductive health,
community-based micro-finance, food security, water and sanitation, peace building, and
basic/girls education, among others.
The findings of the meta-evaluation can be summarized as follows:
Power and gender analyses in projects: While a few projects did try to analyze gender
and gender inequity, no projects actually conducted any type of power analysis or define
how they would operationalize empowerment of women. This is an important first step
toward creating indicators that would help measure the impact of project interventions. It
is particularly important to understand the structural, political, economic and
historical/cultural aspects of power and gender inequity.
Empowerment approaches and strategies: Who are we targeting and how are we trying to
do it? Projects that disaggregated their target population of women used a variety of
categories: heads of household, poor women, women of a certain age, schools attenders,
lactating/pregnant women, and several others. Disaggregating women into social
categories helps us see who exactly is being influenced or changed in some way.
The meta-evaluation also analyzed the most common strategies and approaches used in
the 31 projects to empower women, as shown below:
Savings and Credit: 8 projects
Bringing women into positions of decision-making in groups, committees,
and organizations: 7 projects
Health education for women/girls: 7
Health training for MOH staff: 5
Gender sensitivity training for CARE staff: 3
Peer educators/leaders: 3
Teacher training: 3
Employment of women in food for work or cash for work projects: 2
Building and reserving market stalls for women: 2
Building schools where girls could be accommodated: 2
Training in gender sensitivity for agricultural extension workers: 2
Seeking/promoting/facilitating equitable access for women to agricultural
inputs and markets: 2
Establishing women’s networks/coalitions: 2
Working through existing village power structures, even when patriarchal: 2
One way of analyzing how CARE is focusing its women’s empowerment work is to plot them
against the CARE WE Framework, which has three dimensions – agency, structure and
relationships – and another 23 sub-divisions, as shown below:
Where are CARE program focusing Women’s Empowerment/Gender Inequity
Work?
Sub-Dimension
A
G
E
N
C
Y
Self image/self esteem
Education/training; credit/savings; employment (food for work, cash for work),
income generation; networking with other women
Legal/rights awareness
Training elected women; general civil/political rights information/awareness
building; education of rights re., particular issues (ex., right to universal
insurance)
Information/skills
Savings/credit; business/organizational management; meetings/information
sessions/training on reproductive or general health; vocational skills; animal
husbandry/veterinary skills; improved agricultural production techniques
Education
Employment/control of
own labour
Food and cash for work
Decision influence in the
household
Education/training; income generation; employment; reproductive and sexual
health awareness building and rights
Group
membership/activism
Ensuring that women are represented in decision-making bodies; savings/credit
groups; assertiveness/public speaking skills; ensuring that women can join
groups; facilitating participation of women in customary decision-making bodies
Material assets owned
Seed provision; chicken provision; savings and credit; vocational training;
farmer group formation; relief supplies; remittances; income generation @
group or individual level; land retitling/ownership/usufruct
Body health/ integrity
Training on violence against women; health service quality/equity for
women/girls; health education; conflict resolution and negotiation training
Laws and practices of
citizenship
Information & access to
services
Access to justice
(enforceability of rights)
Market accessibility
(labour/credits/goods)
Political representation
State budgeting
practices
1
School going
Cash/food for work; vocational help; rice mill
Mobility in public space
Marriage/kinship rules,
norms, processes
S
T
R
U
C
T
U
R
E
Examples of strategies/approaches1
Early marriage mitigation; awareness building on gendered division of labour;
training/support to help women influence reproductive health behaviours; land
reform
Advocacy/awareness raising; promoting freedom of religion, freedom to speak
in public; securing role in public decision making and as civil society members;
raising teens’ issues/problems as human rights/public policy ones
Education/training of rights bearers vis-à-vis their duties; lobbying and advocacy
on health budgets (access to reproductive and other health services); leading
world AIDS day events; documenting and sharing information re., women’s
issues; access to water; use of boats in floods; distributing community radios
which allow immediate access to health care professional; general human rights
awareness raisings
Holding government and elected officials publicly accountable; forming
women’s collectives/federations to lobby/advocate
Access to credit; market stalls; agricultural marketing; road building
Training female members of local elected bodies; organizing political party
forums; supporting independent electoral commission
Convincing municipalities to allocate resources to support health strategies
Six projects deployed approaches that did not fall easily into this schema. They were: Potable drinking water and ease
of gathering; reducing women’s workload; .mitigating environmental shocks; understanding by women of root causes of
conflict; and improved agricultural practices.
R
E
L
A
T
I
O
N
S
Density and quality of
civil society
representation
Consciousness of self
and others as
interdependent
Negotiation and
accommodation habits
Alliance and coalition
habits
Pursuit and acceptance
of accountability
New social forms
Contractually requiring % of female participation in partners; ensuring women in
leadership roles; gender training to partners and encouraging them to hire
women
Female heads of household summit; coalitions and networks
Training in arbitration/dispute management; training in public speaking
Coalitions and networks; building federations; linking actors across lines of
cleavage
Human rights and women’s rights education/awareness raising; encouraging
and facilitating dialogue between social actors
Establishing new organizations; forging personal bonds between women of
different social groups; forging new relationships in communities for
educated/training women;
What can be concluded from the above table is that CARE tends to target its women’s
empowerment efforts in certain areas and to avoid other areas. In fact, projects are
heavily focused on increasing the agency dimension of empowerment (self-esteem, etc),
with some emphasis on improving structure (environment and context), but hardly any
emphasis on building social and personal relationships.
Agency
What
CARE
tends to
target
What
CARE
tends to
shy away
from










self image/self esteem
information/skills
group membership/
activism
material assets owned
Legal/rights awareness
Education
Employment/control of
own labour
Mobility in public space
Decision influence in
the household
Body health/ integrity
Structure








Relationships
Information and access
to services
Market accessibility
Marriage/kinship rules,
norms, processes
Laws and practices of
citizenship
Access to justice
(enforceability of
rights)
Political representation
State budgeting
practices
Density and quality of
civil society
representation





Consciousness of self
and others as
interdependent
Negotiation and
accommodation habits
Alliance and coalition
habits
Pursuit and
acceptance of
accountability
New social forms
The third question asked in this meta-evaluation had to do with whether CARE’s work is
making any difference on women’s empowerment or gender inequity. To answer this
question, the researchers looked at the indicators of empowerment used for the 23 subdimensions in the WE Framework.
What are CARE programs measuring when they say they are trying to empower
women or alter gender relations?
Sub-Dimension2
A
G
E
N
C
Y
Indicators
Self image/self esteem
Legal/rights awareness
Information/skills









Education























Employment/control of
own labour
Mobility in public space
Decision influence in the
household
Group
membership/activism
Material assets owned
Body health/ integrity




2
Self confidence
Interest in human rights
Acquaintance with peace and related issues
Development of expertise in certain area
# of trainees who are women
Availability of and access to balanced information
Ability to present concise information on political platforms
New experiences
Proportion of women who’ve participated in an reproductive health education
session in last six months
%ethnic attendance in school;
#/% of boys/girls enrolled in school
Wages/salaries of women
Person days of employment
Visits to parents’ home
Consumption of nutritious foods
# of women able to discuss STIs with partners
Proportion of women in decision-making groups
Participation in peace and capacity building initiatives
Proportion of women in different project activities
Reliance on remittances
% of vegetable farmers increasing productivity
Savings
Household assets
Average house size
Average monthly income
Improvement in health and sanitation practices
Use of safe water
Diarrhoea incidence among children
Incidence of acute respiratory infections
#/% of underweight infants
% deliveries assisted by trained personnel
% of women who can articulate advantages of birth spacing (important for
self-healthcare, self-esteem, exercise of rights, as per project)
% of new mothers going to post-partum visits
#/% pregnant women going to prenatal control visits
# of women/men with improved health attitudes/practices
Knowledge, attitudes and practices changes re., health and nutrition
Refer to Annex 3 for definitions of these sub-dimensions.
Sub-Dimension
S
T
R
U
C
T
U
R
E
Marriage/kinship rules,
norms, processes
Laws and practices of
citizenship
Information & access to
services

Discussing gender division of labour in HH







% satisfied with basic services in the past six months
Improving quality of care
% of health services observed to have IEC materials
% of women who had a pap smear, received their results, and waited less
than three months for results
% of healthcare services reporting they lack family planning and pap smear
materials
% of people who were diagnosed with STIs that received treatment
% insurance policy holders that are women (positioned as a rights issue by
project)
Improved quality of care facilities (a measure of rights fulfilment as per
project strategy)
# of women reporting improved credit negotiating skills
Credit repayment rates
Loan capital
Transportation costs
Farm gate prices
Membership in local government bodies
Ability to express diverse opinions in a safe public forum
Reduced fear of talking about political parties
$ leveraged from communities/local governments for women’s health
services
Level of participation in decision-making (in a wide array of for a: in the
project, in communities, in civil society organizations)
Ability to practice the language of tolerance in public
Sense of collective identity
Ability to intervene in peace building activities


Personal contacts outside of formal meetings
Cross visits with home stays in ethnically different communities


Changes in women’s roles
Community score sheets that assess women’s empowerment, reviewed and
discussed by local focus groups, who assign scores
Modal age group considered “normal” disaggregated by gender, for having
first sexual encounter

Access to justice
(enforceability of rights)



Market accessibility
(labour/credits/goods)
Political representation
State budgeting practices
R
E
L
A
T
I
O
N
S
Indicators
Density and quality of civil
society representation
Consciousness of self and
others as interdependent
Negotiation and
accommodation habits
Alliance and coalition
habits
Pursuit and acceptance of
accountability
New social forms











The empowerment framework that CARE uses argues that women’s empowerment can
only be achieved in a sustainable manner through changes in women’s agency, the social
and institutional structures in which women and men live, and the relationships through
which gender and power are constantly negotiated. The meta-evaluation revealed that
CARE programs are much more likely to be working in women’s individual agency
dimension than in either the structural or relational dimensions. It seems that these 31
CARE projects were more concerned with practical issues rather than strategic gender
interests. Not a single project evaluated talked about trying to change gendered structures
of power or had a specific strategy to do so. This suggested that CARE did not have
much if any sustainable impact on women’s empowerment.
However, almost every evaluation found important, positive changes in women’s lives,
including men becoming more responsive to gender issues and women becoming more
assertive. There were increases in representation of women’s opinions and voices and
changes in how men and women perceive their respective social and economic roles.
The meta-evaluation clearly showed that CARE programs are altering social forms,
creating new gendered spaces, linking women structurally across layers of the global
economy, and making gender roles more equitable. There were one or two cases
showing links between empowerment, gender inequity, and household livelihood
security, between rights, power, and material well-being. So in a few cases, we may be
accomplishing more than we know how to measure or describe.
The…women talked about awareness-raising
within their families as to the gendered division of
labour. They told their families that men and
women should support each other, that men too
should participate in household activities and that
the practice of men eating before women should
be done away with. One woman said that things
have changed considerably in her household and
her brother in law now sees no problem in
scraping a coconut.
The example in the box raises the
question of how to place a value
on “scraping a coconut” and
what it tells us about the impacts
– and failures – of our work?
The CARE projects have had
impacts on women’s
empowerment but on a very
small scale. They are focused
strongly on women’s agency, which is hardly a recipe for sustainable impact on gendered
structures of power. Most of the projects conceived of empowerment just as
“strengthening women.”
Question four looks CARE’s internal gender equity and diversity norms, practices, and
policies. CARE staff are subject to the very the very gender norms and values that
projects might seek to change. It is at this interface where our internal practices, policies,
and staff support systems around gender equity interlock inextricably with our global
human rights and poverty eradication Vision, as one evaluator eloquently wrote:
Where
CARE has
worked on
internal
gender
equity and
diversity
initiatives,
sometimes there is a positive relationship between these efforts and the gendered impacts
of the project. However, the lack of effective internal attention to gender and diversity
can also be a barrier to project gender outcomes and impacts. While CARE has done a
great deal of gender equity and diversity training, there is much more to do. Our designs
and indicators, for example, do need to improve; but this cannot happen without project
staff who understand just what an empowerment approach is all about.
I
Many staff members hail from the communities within which they work and being seen to attack or
disrupt existing power structures not only puts staff and their families in an awkward position but
probably seems pointless as it changes the way “things have always been”. It undermines the
very structure which gives the staff respectability in communities or which determines their position
in relation to members of the opposite sex within their family. In addition, staff will always have to
live within their communities and extended families whereas they may move from one organisation
to another and expatriate staff who ‘import’ such ideas change on a regular basis. In situations of
rapid change such as war and civil insecurity, age-old structures, traditions and discriminatory
practices may bring a comforting sense of continuity for some.
In conclusion, defining women’s empowerment is not straightforward, because of all the
contextual and situational factors involved. Moreover, it is not clear that the definition
can be made during the project design process, because it needs to involve project staff
and participants. Second, since advancing women’s empowerment requires a process
approach, it is hard to identify the indicators of empowerment at the outset of an
intervention. New methodologies are required for monitoring the process, and the old
approach of having a baseline with quantitative measurements of indicators at two points
in time need rethinking when the line between the process and the outcome is blurred.
Without clear guidance, we must innovate and invent both approaches and M&E
methodologies, then develop the staff capacities to implement them. Put this way, the
challenge of being accountable for impacts on women’s empowerment and gender
inequity is more a house construction job than a housekeeping task.
Note: The complete document has a capsule overview of the Women’s Empowerment
Global Research Framework, which explains the agency, structure, relationships
dimensions and how they are related to each other.