Evaluating Women's Empowerment: Experimenting with a Creative Participatory Self-evaluation Methodology in Papua New Guinea
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | Joy Marie Waffi |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X1701700306 |
| Subject Matter | Narrative Article |
40 Evaluation Journal of Australasia Vol 17 | No 3 | 2017
NARRATIVE ARTICLE Evaluation Journal of Australasia Vol 17 | No 3 | 2017 | pp. 40–42
This article introduces a participatory evaluation
methodology that can be used with very low literacy
groups of women to capture change experienced in
their voice, participation, and decision-making abilities
at the household and community levels. Central to this
methodology is the process utilised to enable a personal
determination of the level of change that has taken place
according to individual baselines and circumstances, and
using this information to present a more accurate picture of
how much change has occurred for some women versus
others and use percentage break-ups to show the dierent
change-level-groups of women in a community. Whereas
one can easily make the mistake of generalising change
levels for all the women based on the responses of a few
outspoken ones, this evaluation methodology captures the
richness and diversity that exists even among a small group
of women. Utilising such an evaluation approach makes
one recognise the complexities that come with measuring
change in women’s voice, participation and decision-
making in very low literacy settings.
Developed in haste and used for an internal CARE
International end-of-project evaluation in early 2014, the
author shares her original experience of utilising this new
self-developed participatory evaluation methodology. The
article is sequenced so that the reader is presented with the
circumstances out of which this evaluation methodology
was developed, the benets discovered from utilising it,
shortfalls of the original methodology, and improvements
that will be made to further develop and strengthen the
methodology.
JOY MARIE WAFFI
Evaluating women’s empowerment:
experimenting with a creative participatory
self-evaluation methodology in Papua
New Guinea
Joy Marie Wa is Project Manager, Better
Governance for Education Project at CARE
International in Papua New Guinea.
Email: joy.waffi@careint.org
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