The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work.
UN Women carries out evaluations in the thematic and organizational performance areas outlined in its Strategic Plan and produces reports with their findings. The Evaluation Office also develops guidelines and methodologies to mainstream gender equality and human rights perspectives and approaches in the evaluation practice.
UN-Women promotes coordination and accountability in the UN System through evaluation in three main areas:
- by fostering joint evaluations on gender equality and serving as a repository of evaluations in the UN system on gender equality and women’s empowerment;
- by drawing on the opportunities offered by UN system wide evaluation processes (i.e. DaO and UNDAFs) for generating evaluative information on UN system contribution to gender equality; and
- actively contributing to the work of the UNEG for the inclusion of a gender equality perspective in UN evaluations through the development of guidelines and accountability frameworks.
As a member of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), UN Women follows its norms and standards. UN Women evaluations are gender equality and rights responsive. This implies that they assess the results of interventions on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights.
Resources
A Manager’s Guide to Gender Equality– and Human Rights–Responsive Evaluation. This practical, online guide aims to help those initiating, managing and/or using gender equality (GE)– and human rights (HR)–responsive evaluations. It provides direction, advice and tools for every step in the evaluation process — from getting started, to preparation, conduct and evaluation use and follow-up. It contains tools to aid in the process and references to provide a greater depth of information on specific topics and issues. read more »
My M&E. My M&E is a collaborative website to share knowledge on country-led M&E systems worldwide. In addition to being a learning resource, My M&E facilitates the strengthening of a global community, while identifying good practices and lessons learned about program monitoring and evaluation in general, and on country-led M&E systems in particular. While My M&E was founded by IOCE, UNICEF and DevInfo, it is managed by a consortium of partner organizations including IDEAS, IPDET, WHO/PAHO, UN Women, ReLAC, Preval, Agencia brasileira de Avaliacao, SLEvA and IPEN. read more »
Latest Evaluation Reports
Analytical Overview of the UN Joint Gender Programmes Portfolio (2011). This report is a pre-study to support the scoping process for the future Evaluation of Joint Gender Programmes (JPGs) in the UN system, which will evaluate the UN’s joint programmes in the area of gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment. It provides the drafters of the terms of reference for the future JGPs evaluation with qualitative and quantitative analytical overview of the JGP portfolio and reflections on the emerging strategic priorities, evaluability and methodological options. read more »
UNIFEM Strategic Plan (2008–2011) Evaluability Assessment (2011). This study is an analysis of the UNIFEM Strategic Plan (2008–2011), its associated results frameworks and institutional systems. It assesses UNIFEM’s experience of implementing the Strategic Plan, with a view to informing the new strategic planning process of UN Women. It is aimed at all members of UN Women and relevant partners, at headquarters, sub-regional and country levels, plus any interested external partners. read more »
Evaluation Report: UNIFEM’s Work on Gender-Responsive Budgeting (2010). The evaluation, split into three sets of reports, provides critical lessons on what conditions and mechanisms enable or hinder UNIFEM’s work in increasing gender equality in budget processes and practices. It also analyses UNIFEM’s overall approach to gender-responsive budget programming. read more »
Evaluation Report: United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women (2010). This evaluation looks into the implementation and overall effectivness of the 2005-2008 United Nations Trust Fund Strategy in advancing the fund’s work on ending violence against women at country levels. read more »
Evaluation Report: UNIFEM’s Partnerships with Regional Organizations to Advance Gender Equality (2010). This report assesses UNIFEM’s partnerships with regional organizations in order to affect progress towards gender equality at regional and national levels. It reviews existing partnerships and discusses areas for development, and includes profiles of six partners and the work undertaken by the organizations to promote and enchance gender equality. read more »
Evaluation Report of the UNIFEM Programme Facilitating CEDAW Implementation in Southeast Asia (CEDAW SEAP) (2009). The evaluation of the programme “Facilitating the Implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in Southeast Asia” represents the first corporate evaluation completed by UNIFEM within the framework of the organization’s Strategic Plan 2008–2011. It assesses the effectiveness, relevance and sustainability of the programme, and provides recommendations on how it can be further implemented to effectively build on partnerships, experiences and achievements, provide support for ongoing learning and enhance the use of results-based management. read more »
All UN Women evaluation reports are archived in the Evaluation Resource Centre (ERC).
