ABSTRACT
Country-led evaluations could play a central role in informing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reviews and, together with strong monitoring data, supporting national policy decision-making. UN Women, the UN entity for gender equality and women’s empowerment, defines gender-responsive evaluation as having two essential elements: what the evaluation examines, and how it is undertaken. Gender-responsive evaluation assesses the degree to which gender and power relationships – including structural and other causes that give rise to inequalities, discrimination, and unfair power relations – change as a result of an intervention. Equity-focused and gender-responsive evaluations use existing evaluation methods but bring a crucial perspective to how interventions are evaluated. The key bodies responsible for implementing country-led evaluations within each country are national governments. Using country-led evaluations to inform the SDG follow-up and review mechanisms goes hand in hand with strengthening national evaluation capacities. Evaluation capacity development focused on strengthening the knowledge and skills of individuals through training programmes.
