Voices and Values: The Politics of Feminist Evaluation

Over the last several years, regular evaluation of development programs has become essential in measuring and understanding their true impact. Feminist and gender-sensitive evaluations have gradually emerged, drawing attention to existing inequities--gender, caste, class, location, and more--and the cumulative effect of these biases on daily life. Such evaluations are also deeply political; they explicitly acknowledge that gender-based inequalities exist, show how they remain embedded in society, and articulate ways to address them.

Based on four years of research, Voices and Values offers critical insight into how gender, class, and nationality inflect and affect sociological research. It examines how feminist evaluations could make an effective contribution to new policy formulations oriented to gender and social equity. The essays here focus centrally on the structural roots of inequity: giving weight to all perspectives; adding value to marginalized groups and people under evaluation; and taking forward the findings of evaluation into advocacy for change. In doing so, each essay advances the understanding of feminist evaluation both conceptually and as practice.

Ratna M. Sudarshan was previously director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi. She has worked with the National Council of Applied Economic Research and been a fellow at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, also in Delhi. Rajib Nandi is a research fellow and Officer-in-Charge at the Institute of Social Studies Trust. He is a founder and core group member of the Evaluation Community of India and a board member of Community of Evaluators-South Asia.