Feminist Evaluation rests on eight interconnected core principles that guide how evaluators think, design, and interact with evidence:

 

#	Core Principle	Meaning & Practical Application
1	Evaluation is Political.	Every decision about what to measure reflects someone’s values and interests; there is no neutral perspective.
2	Context Matters	Evaluation tools must be designed for specific communities, not applied as fixed templates.
3	Knowledge is Power	Whoever controls findings controls the narrative of what happened and what should happen next.
4	Multiple Ways of Knowing Are Valid	Lived accounts and personal narratives are legitimate evidence, not soft supplements to numerical data.
5	Methods & Institutions Are Socially Constructed	Standard forms, indicators, and formal reports were built by people and can be rebuilt differently.
6	Discrimination Is Intersectional	Barriers compound across gender, disability, poverty, age, and location as one combined reality.
7	Inequalities Are Systemic and Structural	Problems are built into rules and systems, not caused merely by individual choices or failures.
8	Evaluation Should Contribute to Social Change	The goal of evaluation isn’t just to describe change; it must actively leave the situation better.

 

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Detailed Principle Deep-Dives & Application Examples:

Principle 1: Evaluation is Political

Measuring “number of women trained” instead of “whether trained women gained real decision-making influence” is not a neutral technical preference. It reflects a value choice about what counts as success.

• Rule: Always ask directly: “Whose definition of success are we using, and who chose it?”

Principle 2: Context Matters

A written survey works well in a highly literate community, but the exact same written survey in an oral-tradition community produces weak, unreliable data.

• Rule: Before picking tools, ask what communication methods the community already trusts and uses.

Principle 3: Knowledge is Power

If only a donor’s head office decides what a report says and controls who reads it, that donor controls the narrative of the entire programme.

• Rule: Share data and findings back with communities so they hold knowledge power.

Principle 4: Multiple Ways of Knowing Are Valid

A woman stating, “I now speak up in community meetings I used to stay silent in,” is valid, legitimate evidence of an increase in confidence and voice, even if it cannot be counted on a spreadsheet.

Principle 5: Methods and Institutions Are Socially Constructed

Writing evaluation reports exclusively in formal English for donors is an organizational choice, not an immutable law. Evaluations can just as validly be conducted as oral reporting sessions in local languages.

Principle 6: Discrimination is Intersectional

A woman with a disability living in poverty in a rural area does not experience three separate, stacked barriers. She navigates one combined, harder-to-navigate reality.

Principle 7: Inequalities Are Systemic and Structural

If women are not attending leadership meetings, recommending that they “prioritize attendance” ignores structural barriers like childcare, transport, and safety concerns.

Principle 8: Evaluation Should Contribute to Social Change

An evaluation that identifies a barrier to participation and feeds that finding directly back to project managers to change transport or scheduling contributes to change. One that files the finding away in a cabinet does not.