UN Women rapid assessment tool to evaluate gender equality and women’s empowerment results in humanitarian contexts

The Independent Evaluation Service, part of the Independent Evaluation and Audit Service of UN Women, has developed a new rapid tool to assess progress on achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in humanitarian contexts.

This rapid assessment tool focuses on three domains: leadership and participation, protection and safety, and economic well-being. It complements existing gender tools by including these dimensions as well as providing an evaluative lens for the assessment of gender equality results. This is significant as evaluations of humanitarian responses have not always systematically assessed the results of interventions in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

This tool could be used in conjunction with the IASC Gender with Age Marker (GAM) as it offers an objective assessment based on multiple sources and validation. Its added value lies in its capability to measure economic well-being and leadership and participation aspects of humanitarian interventions, not as part of the intended outcomes but as a result of the programme design and process.

The tool (MS Excel) consists of a dashboard and questionnaire together with a guidance note that allows monitoring and evaluation officers to quickly assess whether an intervention is gender-negative, gender-blind, gender-sensitive, gender-responsive, or gender-transformative.