UN Women’s work on women’s economic empowerment has a broad and ambitious mandate and aims to strengthen women’s economic rights and respond to pressing global needs. This independent corporate thematic evaluation was undertaken to assess the relevance, effectiveness, coherence, efficiency, and sustainability of UN Women’s contributions to women’s economic empowerment by advancing gender responsive laws, frameworks, policies, and partnerships, and proposes recommendations and insights to strengthen this area of work.

This publication is a collaboration between the UN Women’s Independent Evaluation Service and the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health to explore the link between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 and SDG 5 (gender equality), as part of a system of interconnected SDGs and indicators within these goals.

In 2021, the Independent Evaluation Service condcuted the corporate evaluation on UN Women’s policy advaocy work. The evaluation team assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and coherence of UN Women’s policy advocacy work to deliver high-impact and transformative results in line with the UN Women Strategic Plan 2018–2021. Findings from this evaluation are expected to contribute to strategic decision-making, organizational learning and accountability, and implementation of the UN Women Strategic Plan 2022–2025.

This meta-synthesis reviewed and aggregated insights from 39 evaluation reports completed during 2017 and 2018 against selected development and organizational effectiveness and efficiency criteria. The purpose of the report is to contribute to organizational learning and effective knowledge management through the identification of recurring findings, lessons learned, and evidence on the key areas of work of UN Women.

This report focuses on the final meta-analysis of evaluations covering the Strategic Plan 2014–2017 cycle. It synthesizes information from 39 evaluations and provides a consolidated assessment of the development effectiveness and efficiency results of UN Women. The analysis also provides insights on the drivers of change and contributions made by UN Women to humanitarian response.

This report contains the findings and recommendations of the first independent evaluation commissioned by UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality (FGE), assessing USD 84 million invested through 121 grants across 80 countries since the FGE’s creation in 2009.

The purpose of the corporate evaluation was to assess UN Women’s contribution from 2011 to 2017 towards women’s ability to “lead and participate in decision-making at all levels”, and to provide evidence from past practice to inform its future strategic planning and implementation in this area. It analysed UN Women’s contribution across its integrated mandate at the global, regional, and country levels against four criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability.

This independent meta analysis is a systematic review of findings, conclusions, lessons and recommendations from high-quality evaluations produced by UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality–supported programmes between 2011 and 2015. It provides evidence-based information and insights about what works for whom in regards to women’s political and economic empowerment and the processes and approach of the Fund for Gender Equality.

The UN Women Independent Evaluation Office undertook this corporate evaluation to learn from the progress made so far towards achieving results, with the aim of informing future work. The evaluation covered all dimensions of women’s economic empowerment work in UN Women. It identified strengths and weaknesses and developed five recommendations intended to enhance UN Women work in women’s economic empowerment at both the national and global levels.

This publication provides findings from the recent evaluation of the “Dalit Women's Livelihood Accountability Initiative supported by the UN Women's Fund for Gender Equality and illustrates how the programme contributed to changing the lives of marginalised Dalit women in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in India.