Engendering Policy through Evaluation: Uncovering Exclusion and Challenging Inequities in India

The socioeconomic context in India is characterized by persistent gender gaps and inequalities; an increasing demand for transparency and accountability; and growing interest in evaluation, but shortfall in evaluation capacity. This project will strengthen the ability of social science researchers to use gender-sensitive approaches to understanding the gendered implications of policies and programs in the area of education, health, governance and livelihood. It will do so by enabling IDRC grantees and other researchers to participate in workshops, where they will acquire the tools, training and peer support to improve the quality of the evaluations that they are working on. At the same time, the project will endeavour to demonstrate that such research yields useful knowledge on persistent inequities, thereby contributing to a new sub-field in evaluation based on feminist and equity-oriented approaches. The focus of the project is India. Given the interest of researchers from neighboring countries, however, it will also be open to other South Asians.