Learning with Purpose from Empowerment: A study of Methodological Barriers and Challenges to Enhancing Organisational Learning from Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality Interventions

Abstract: Since the early 1990’s, sector-wide evaluation reports have identified substantial weaknesses connected to women’s empowerment and gender equality interventions. These weaknesses result from the failure to institutionalise activities, a lack of resources and deficient reporting of results. Additionally, recent evaluation reports have identified the same weaknesses as were identified in the early 1990’s. Subsequently, funding for the sector have increased from an average of USD 5,2 billions in 2007-08 to USD 8,8 billions in 2013-14. This indicates an emergent need to investigate why weaknesses persist despite a sector-wide acknowledgement of the importance and relevance of women’s empowerment and gender equality. This thesis discusses this paradox through a literature review; 64 evaluation reports and 19 academic articles concerning methodological barriers and challenges to evaluating and reporting results are reviewed. The purpose is to propose approaches to enhance organisational learning by identifying challenges to the evaluation practices of gender-specific interventions. The results indicate that several challenges exist for the evaluating women’s empowerment and gender equality; under prioritisation of learning, an emphasis on accountability, lack of impact-focus in measurements, a reluctance to prioritise context analyses and participatory approaches, and inadequate measurement practices of empowerment processes. This thesis discusses how to reduce these challenges and three approaches are proposed; to increase collaboration and coordination through networks, to formalise enforcement tools and learning strategies and to mainstream organisational learning by decentralising evaluation responsibilities. This thesis thus concludes that the sector-wide weaknesses will persist unless stakeholders prioritise learning as a pivotal element of their organisational structure.