Step 2: Preparing the recommendations and lessons learned
The findings of your evaluation will support the drafting of gender-responsive lessons learned that will inform future interventions.
These lessons learned should be based on what worked well, so that future interventions can sustain positive gender impacts, as well as what can be improved, to prevent negative gender impacts in future.
The first step is to develop recommendations to address the negative gender impacts identified, including recommendations for changes to the intervention design, implementation, budget and monitoring and evaluation processes.
Interventions should not only avoid discrimination; they should also take steps to promote gender equality. The gender impacts of the intervention you are evaluating can also help you to decide on what kind of response you should use. This can ensure not only that negative gender impacts are correctly identified, but that the intervention contributes to gender equality.
Click here to see an example of a policy promoting positive gender impacts.
Some common flaws in the design and implementation of interventions can have a negative impact on gender equality. Below you will find specific strategies to help you address these common flaws in future interventions and ensure that they are gender responsive.
Next, when drafting gender-responsive lessons learned in evaluations, consider the following questions.
- How can the findings of the evaluation be used to inform gender-responsive recommendations?
- How can the negative impacts and gaps identified be addressed in future interventions?
- If the intervention under evaluation is going to be revised, what changes should be implemented to ensure that it promotes gender equality?
Integrate the gender-responsive lessons learned into the broader set of conclusions and recommendations emerging from your evaluation
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Think about how a future intervention could avoid negative impacts and actively promote gender equality. Consider how the recommendations emerging from your evaluation can cover all dimensions of possible gender impacts. Relate each of the gender-related findings/conclusions to specific recommendations.
You can review the different dimensions of gender impacts in Tool 6 and follow the strategies proposed in Step 2 of this tool.
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Think about how the mainstreaming of gender equality could be improved in a future/revised intervention. Refresh your memory of Step 2 of Tool 6 to identify future opportunities to conduct gender mainstreaming.
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Include specific and actionable recommendations on gender equality that address particular stakeholders and decision-makers. Explain to each duty-bearer what changes they need to implement to advance gender equality and implement gender mainstreaming, in line with their obligations. Consider indicating the level of priority for each recommendation and the timeline for implementing each recommendation.
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Relate the lessons learned and recommendations to the gender equality commitments and goals of your organisation and those found in European or national strategies.
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Consult the demands of other stakeholders (CSOs, gender experts, etc. ) to inform recommendations that support transformative change for gender equality beyond what decision-makers/duty-bears have already commmitted to.
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Given that all EU evaluations need to explore and suggest how to simplify and cut burdens in line with the REFIT programme, make sure your recommendations do not put at risk present and future achievements in gender equality and gender mainstreaming in EU policymaking, such as specific funding for gender equality or the collection of sex/gender-disaggregated data in EU-funded programmes and projects.
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To ensure the lessons learned and recommendations reach the political level, disseminate the findings and recommendations to the relevant stakeholders and decision-makers. For help on this, see Tool 11.
A reform of the pension system should not only formally ensure equal treatment for women and men in matters of social security, but also take action to address the existing gender pension gap. The pension gender gap results from an accumulation of gender inequalities over the course of a woman’s life. These include women’s lower lifetime earnings, smaller or interrupted social security contributions due to caring responsibilities and pregnancy and women’s greater likelihood of working part-time.[1]
While a pension reform cannot correct all of these factors, its design should, as a minimum, avoid increasing gender inequalities – for instance, by not stopping contributions during periods of maternity and parental leave and by ensuring that women receive, on divorce, a fair share of the retirement benefit entitlements accumulated within their former relationship.[2]
At best, the design of a pension plan should reduce the impact that existing gender inequalities can have on the retirement benefits women will receive – for instance, by relaxing eligibility criteria, providing more flexibility in the contributions plan, accounting for women’s longer life expectancy, implementing automatic enrolment and providing financial incentives for women to join and save in their plans.[3]
For example, Spain has taken steps in recent years to modify the conditions for calculating the retirement pension of part-time workers after it was found that they indirectly discriminated against women – in 2019, 74 % of part-time workers in Spain were women.[4] Previous calculation rules resulted in part-time workers working double or more days to reach the same level of ‘contributed period’ as a full-time worker. Recent reforms establish that a part-time workday will compute as a full-time working day when calculating the contributed period. Other policy actions to tackle the gender pension gap in Spain include measures to provide coverage to women with gaps in their contributions and a specific supplement for women (and men) who have had children and had to interrupt their professional careers.[5]
The organisations that conducted an evaluation and (eco)feminist cost–benefit analysis of the Sendou I coal-fired power plant in Senegal prepared conclusions and recommendations addressed to the (AfDB) – the organisation that sponsored the project.[6]
Finding. The AfDB’s gender policy, strategy and evaluation framework was wholly undermined by the Sendou I project processes.
The disastrous implications of Sendou I for women’s property rights and land tenure security, which violate the AfDB’s gender strategy’s fundamental pillars, are a basis for major concern. In addition, the destructive impacts on women’s health and livelihoods violate the bank’s gender policy commitment to improve women’s health. By flouting the AfDB’s gender policy and strategy priorities, the bank is deepening women’s poverty and societal exclusion.
Our impact evaluation has clearly indicated that the Sendou I project personnel did not undertake a gender analysis. They did not produce gender disaggregated data – which the AfDB’s gender strategy commits to collecting – to inform project design and implementation. The result of this is that the particular impacts on women have never been identified and/or responded to by the AfDB, the project promoters, or Senegal’s government. Likewise, according to our (eco)feminist assessment, the gendered impacts and implications of Sendou I regarding key standards relating to women’s economic empowerment are in violation of the AfDB’s guiding principles.
The complete lack of gender baseline and monitoring data undermines the bank’s ability to measure and monitor project changes that have similar and/or differential impacts on women's and men’s rights and livelihoods. This (eco)feminist impact assessment underlines the disastrous impacts of neglecting to collect gender-sensitive baseline and monitoring data.
Recommendation I. For accountability and transparency, the AfDB should engage in a full community consultation process that includes the Khelkom women, and not only women selected by the local authorities and the project promoters in Bargny. This would allow the AfDB to listen directly to community and women’s unmediated views about Sendou I and its impacts, and listen to local people’s recommendations for remedy and compensation. At the minimum, there should be full compensation for: land rights lost, livelihoods eroded, health conditions worsened, increases in women’s unpaid labour burdens, and a range of social stresses.
Recommendation II. The AfDB should, without delay, take this minimum and necessary step: develop an adequate women’s rights – with a strong environmental lens – impact assessment and monitoring and evaluation framework for all projects it considers supporting. If the AfDB does not have the capacity to support the implementation of its own policies, guidelines and frameworks, including a more comprehensive women’s rights impact assessment and monitoring and evaluation framework, then projects should not be approved for funding.
The (2017-2027 SREI) is a fictional[7] intervention launched in 2017 by DG Agriculture and Rural Development. The SREI aimed to enhance rural livelihoods, strengthen rural infrastructure and foster environmental sustainability in five Member States. The initiative was funded by the European Commission (EUR 50 million) and implemented by managing authorities in each Member State. With this initiative, the Commission aimed to:
- strengthen rural infrastructure, including transport networks and internet connectivity;
- support farmers and agricultural innovation by investing in training and capacity-building programmes tailored to the needs of rural communities, focusing on areas such as agri-business management, sustainable farming practices, marketing and digital literacy;
- foster environmental sustainability by developing a plan to support the installation of renewable energy systems to meet farm energy needs and support the adoption of sustainable farming.
Finding. The evaluation team found that the intervention had not successfully achieved its objective of supporting farmers and agricultural innovation. It was concluded that the initiative had failed to support women farmers and promote agricultural innovation for women-owned farms in the five Member States.
An analysis of the available monitoring data, based on some sex-disaggregated output indicators, revealed that women farmers represented only 20 % of the participants in these programmes. Where available, post-training questionnaires showed lower levels of satisfaction with the programmes and lower attainment of learning objectives among women farmers. By analysing the SREI’s documentation, the evaluation team found that while the initiative had committed to promoting gender equality and supporting women farmers in line with EU commitments, the design of the training had failed to identify the competence-building needs of women and men farmers in each of the Member States and had not planned enough dissemination activities to reach the target audience. After interviewing representatives of women’s farming associations and analysing the findings of a targeted consultation, the evaluation team compiled a list of the reasons for dissatisfaction among women farmers.
- Many training courses took place at inconvenient times or required long journeys to reach the nearest town. Some women mentioned a lack of care facilities in rural areas that might have facilitated their attendance.
- Many training courses required digital literacy and previous knowledge of marketing.
- Many women farmers did not know about the training courses because they were only disseminated only through well-established farmer organisations where women owners are under-represented.
- The training courses on agri-business management targeted owners with medium-sized farms, while women tended to have smaller farms.
Recommendation. In the upcoming SREI II (2027–2037), DG Agriculture and Rural Development should uphold the EU’s obligation and commitment to promoting gender equality and mainstreaming a gender perspective. Specifically, SREI II should contribute to increasing the participation of women in farming in line with the common agricultural policy’s objective on ‘Jobs, growth and equality in rural areas’. In the training and capacity-building programmes to support farmers, DG Agriculture and Rural Development must ensure the following.
- Managing authorities and implementing organisations map the training needs of women and men farmers in local communities, in their diverse situations such as age, family status or size of the farms, and develop the content and format of training on that basis. For this purpose, managing authorities and implementing organisations should identify, consult and engage with local organisations, specifically those representing women farmers.
- Monitoring frameworks are strengthened to collect sex-disaggregated data and include quantitative and qualitative gender indicators (at the levels of both outputs and outcomes). Gender targets should be established. Training should be regularly monitored to ensure that uneven attendance and dissatisfaction can be addressed in a timely manner.
- Synergies should be strengthened between the SREI and other EU funds to promote work–life balance and the development of care infrastructure in rural areas.