Ten years ago, the Indian government launched Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) to improve the child sex ratio and promote girls’ education. The scheme had an impressive budget, and awareness campaigns were everywhere, from TV ads to village hoardings. When the parliamentary committee took a closer look, they found that a lion’s share of the funds had fueled awareness campaigns, while a smaller slice had reached girls directly. The initiative had certainly made noise with headlines and workshops, but did it change anything for the girls?
This is a common roadblock with traditional evaluation methods. They’re great at measuring outputs—how many programs were launched, how many people attended, how much money was allocated—but they often fail to ask deeper questions: Did this policy challenge gender norms? Did it shift power? Did it make life better for the people it aimed at helping? That’s where feminist and gender-transformative evaluation come in.
Feminist evaluation isn’t just about adding a gender lens to existing methods. It’s about redefining what we think success looks like. It challenges the assumption that evaluation is neutral and acknowledges that power and privilege shape everything—from whose voices are heard to what kind of impact gets measured.
A gender-transformative evaluation goes further. It doesn’t just track how many women benefited from a policy; it asks:
– Did it challenge harmful gender norms?
– Did it redistribute power?
– Were women and marginalized communities actively involved in shaping the intervention?
Take another example—Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), which provides free LPG connections to low-income women.
On paper, this was a gender-forward policy, meant to reduce women’s exposure to harmful cooking fuels. But a deeper look revealed that many women couldn’t afford to refill the cylinders once the initial subsidy ran out. Traditional evaluation would count the number of gas connections distributed. A feminist evaluation would ask: Did the program improve women’s health and economic independence? Or did it just create another layer of dependence on male family members who control household finances? To what extent did the policy challenge or reinforce existing gender norms and roles within the household and community?
Too often, evaluation is done to communities, not with them. Feminist approaches emphasize co-creation—where affected communities define success, interpret findings, and shape solutions. It’s about listening to lived experiences, not just collecting data points. If a program enrolls more girls in school but does nothing to address early marriage, safety concerns, or cultural biases, is it really creating change?
This is particularly important in India, where many gender policies focus on visibility rather than structural change. The Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, which encourages parents to save money for their daughters’ education and marriage, might seem like a step toward gender equality. But a feminist evaluation would ask whether such schemes reinforce the idea of daughters as financial burdens, rather than shifting the underlying norms that disadvantage them.
A feminist evaluation also recognizes intersectionality—the idea that gender inequality doesn’t exist in isolation. A rural Dalit woman in Bihar faces different challenges than an upper-caste woman in Delhi. Policies that don’t account for these differences often fail the most marginalized groups.
If we’re serious about equity, justice, and lasting change, we can’t keep using evaluation methods that only scratch the surface. We need approaches that:
- Shift power back to communities.
- Expose systemic barriers, not just symptoms.
- Turning evaluation from a bureaucratic exercise into a tool for activism.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to measure impact—it’s to create it.
So, what exactly does feminist evaluation mean? It’s not just about tacking on a “gender lens” to the usual evaluation methods. It’s about completely rethinking how we measure success in the first place. Feminist evaluation forces us to ask: Who gets to decide what success really looks like?
As aptly put by feminist theorist Donna Glover, this approach centralizes the “other”, often ignored half of the population, women or people who identify themselves as women. This method humanizes women and goes beyond rendering them as “subjects”.
Some of the key principles that guide feminist and gender-transformative evaluation are:
- Power Dynamics: As compared to the traditional evaluations which normalized change as one-dimensional, feminist evaluation identifies that power is omnipresent and it impacts who is speaking, who is heard and whose needs are focused upon.
- Intersectionality: Gender inequality doesn’t happen on its own. A woman’s experience of discrimination is shaped by a lot of factors—race, class, caste, disability, and more. Feminist evaluation takes this into account, making sure we don’t just look at gender, but at how different kinds of oppression overlap and impact people’s lives in complex ways.
- Participatory Methods: Traditional evaluations often leave out the voices of the people directly affected by the policy. Feminist evaluation flips this, focusing on co-creation. That means the people most impacted—whether they’re women, marginalized communities, or others—help define what success looks like and how we measure it. After all, who knows the issues better than the people living them every day?
- Transformative Justice: Feminist evaluation isn’t about ticking off a list of short-term outcomes; it’s about looking for long-lasting, meaningful change. It asks whether the policy is tackling the root causes of inequality and redistributing power in a real way, rather than just covering up the surface-level problems.
To understand feminist evaluation, it is crucial to view it as a simplified circular process. Let’s go step by step:
- Community Engagement:
Consider incorporating citizen participation from the very beginning. Do not wait for a policy to be in place before asking for people’s contributions. The individuals that will be most affected by this policy should be involved in its formulation; hence engagement should be from the beginning stage itself.
- Co-Defining Success:
Community members should be engaged to explain what real success looks like as opposed to having vague predetermined lines of success. What real empowerment looks like to them? What are their priority needs? Focusing on community helps keep the evaluation pragmatic and useful instead of irrelevant and unrealistic.
- Data Collection Beyond Numbers:
While numbers do tell us something, they do not tell the entire story. Qualitative data – that is, interviews, personal narratives, and testimonies – are equally important to feminist evaluation. This lets us analyze the extent to which the policy impacts people’s lives daily.
- Evaluation:
After the data has been collected, that is now when the real work begins. At this stage, the focus is not solely on interpreting figures or metrics. It is about determining if deeper questions can be posed. Did this policy question establish gender roles? Did it support the subjugated, most importantly those who have
Conclusion
Therefore, feminist evaluation is more than just counting numbers. It’s about asking whether a policy is changing people’s lives for the better. Instead of just looking at surface-level results, it pushes us to think about whether the policy is shifting power dynamics, challenging gender stereotypes, and creating lasting, meaningful change.
The key is to make sure the people most affected are involved in the process. It’s about looking at the bigger picture, not just checking boxes. Are the changes truly meaningful? Are they breaking down barriers that hold people back?
If you work in policy, research, or advocacy, it’s time to rethink how we evaluate success. Push for feminist and gender-transformative evaluation frameworks. Challenge numbers-only approaches. Make sure evaluation doesn’t just reflect reality, it reshapes it. Let’s measure what truly matters.
