Multiple Voices, Shared Realities: Gendered Inequities in the Evaluation Profession
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Abstract
Transformative change in the evaluation sector in response to the polycrisis is unattainable without first turning inward to examine the evaluation profession and recognizing how politics and power hinder women’s ability to pursue the systemic change it advocates. In response to the International Evaluation Academy’s (IEAc) call to make evaluation fit for purpose amid the global polycrisis, and using their Horizons framing, we applied a feminist, inward-focused lens to examine our profession. Shaped by our positionality, we reflect on how our lived experiences are affected by power structures, likely shaped by the legacy of the field’s patriarchal roots, and share these experiences through four illustrative cases. By sharing these narratives, we provide empirical data that others in the evaluation field can engage with, reinterpret, and take meaning from in ways that resonate with their own contexts and experiences, thereby informing the second and third horizon.
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