5 takeaways: How can evaluation accelerate rights, justice, action, for all women and girls?

In observance of International Women’s Day, the eighth Future of Evaluation dialogue was convened on 10 March 2026 to explore how evaluation can serve as a mechanism for accelerating rights, justice, and transformative action for all women and girls.

The dialogue called for transforming evaluation from a “measurement of progress” into a profession that actively confronts power and highlights systemic inequalities. A fundamental shift was advocated: moving beyond "improving averages," which often masks the fact that marginalized groups are being left behind even when overall statistics look positive, toward a model that prioritizes disaggregated data and centers the voices of women and girls as equal partners in development. This transformation is presented as essential for ensuring evaluation remains a relevant tool for justice in a world facing a polycrisis of climate change, economic instability, and the rapid rise of technologically facilitated gender-based violence. In case you missed the conversation, watch the recording.

Five quick takeaways from the dialogue

1. Focus intentionally on structural causes and hidden inequalities through intersectional lenses. It is recognized that aggregated data often masks the specific barriers faced by women and girls, such as social norms, unpaid care burdens, and digital exclusion. To avoid reinforcing the status quo, evaluations must be intentionally designed to investigate the "why" behind persistent inequalities by utilizing gender-responsive, intersectional frameworks. By analyzing how factors like disability, age, ethnicity, and class intersect with restrictive laws and household power relations, evaluators can transition from merely documenting inequalities to providing the evidence base necessary for dismantling them. This level of visibility is essential for designing policies that fundamentally transform the unequal systems of power that sustain disparity.

2. Shift from transactional to transformative evaluation practices. The dialogue emphasized that evaluation serves its highest purpose when it is embraced as a continuous process of learning rather than a transactional end-of-cycle reporting requirement. A transformative approach requires evaluation to challenge prevailing assumptions and build shared ownership of evidence among stakeholders. When evaluation is used as a driver of voice and action, it moves from being a bureaucratic necessity to a strategic asset that supports collective rights and justice for every woman and girl.

3. Integrate lived experience into the definition of success. The future evaluation practices must center on women and girls defining success for themselves. Rather than "parachuting" into communities with predefined indicators, evaluators are encouraged to use participatory and adolescent-responsive approaches. When findings are grounded in lived experience of women and girls rather than purely institutional perspectives, the resulting evidence gains greater legitimacy and relevance. This ensures that programmes are responsive to the actual needs of women and girls rather than the convenience of the evaluator.

4. Implement real-time and adaptive feedback loops. In rapidly shifting humanitarian and climate contexts, evaluation lag often means findings are outdated by the time they are published. The necessity of moving toward real-time, adaptive evaluation was highlighted as a means of allowing for immediate course correction. Rapid feedback loops and short learning cycles enable organizations to spot gendered impacts early, such as a drop in school attendance among girls following a natural disaster, allowing for interventions to be scaled or adjusted before the damage becomes irreversible.

5. Drive policy co-ownership by engaging decision makers and marginalized groups as strategic partners. The transition from evidence to action can often fail because findings are not translated into the language of decision-makers or the realities of the community. It is recommended that evaluation commissioners involve planning and finance ministries from the outset to align recommendations with budgetary processes, while simultaneously approaching marginalized groups as strategic partners in the evaluation process. By empowering local actors and young evaluators to hold leadership roles in evaluation steering committees and co-designing evaluation methodologies, evaluators can ensure that the evaluation insights are both politically influential and rooted in local knowledge. This dual approach ensures that evaluation remains a respectful, inclusive dialogue that drives both high-level policy change and grassroots accountability.

For more reflection on this dialogue, read the blog by Erica Mattellone.

The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse. 

The next dialogue, “Will evaluation's future be shaped by its creativity and innovation in facing emergent challenges?” will take place on 21 April 2026. Register

This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.