In international development and humanitarian programming, evaluation is frequently described as a technical, objective, and neutral exercise. Evaluators design surveys, count outputs, calculate percentages, and file final reports to demonstrate whether a project met its targets. However, evaluation is never truly neutral.

Every decision made when evaluating a programme, what you choose to count, who you ask, how you collect data, and who defines what “success” looks like either reinforces existing power dynamics or acts to shift them.

Feminist Evaluation is a deliberate choice to make the evaluation process itself an instrument of social justice and power transformation. Rather than treating evaluation as an extractive reporting exercise that serves only donor offices, Feminist Evaluation seeks to amplify marginalized voices, challenge systemic inequalities, shift decision-making authority to local communities, and ensure that generating evidence actively contributes to social change.

 

THE CORE QUESTION OF FEMINIST EVALUATION

Traditional evaluation asks:

“Did the programme work according to the plan?”

Feminist Evaluation asks:

“Who decided what ‘working’ means, and who benefits from that answer?”

 

 Self-Reflection 

Before exploring the core principles, take a moment to reflect on your past experiences with project evaluations:

  • When an external evaluator visits your community or organization, who usually formulates the evaluation questions and indicators before field visits begin?

  • After data collection is completed, do the community members who answered questions ever receive the final findings, or does the information flow strictly upward to donor headquarters?
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