From synthesis to practice: Co-creating a toolkit for Feminist Evaluation in crisis settings

In this blog, Rai Sengupta, an evaluation consultant with UNICEF and experienced practitioner in gender and social policy, explores how feminist evaluation approaches are being adapted to meet the complexities of crisis settings. This blog shares insights from a synthesis of innovative feminist M&E practices from 16 recent evaluations across humanitarian contexts, and introduces a new Feminist Evaluation Toolkit to support more inclusive, accountable, and transformative evaluation in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

In crisis settings - such as conflicts, displacement, and disasters - evaluations often focus on measurable relief outputs, overlooking who benefits and whose voices shape responses. Traditional M&E frameworks, designed for stable contexts, frequently exclude marginalized groups like women, girls, and gender-diverse people due to fragile conditions and unequal power dynamics.

Feminist evaluation responds to these challenges by centering lived realities, dismantling entrenched hierarchies, and redefining evidence to prioritize justice and equity. Yet despite a longstanding call for gender-responsive evaluations, consolidated evidence on feminist evaluation practices adapted specifically for crises has been limited. Additionally, guidance on implementing feminist evaluation for crisis contexts is scarce, which constrains broader uptake and scale of these approaches.

This project - From Insights to Action: Advancing Feminist Evaluation (FE) Innovations in Crisis Contexts - is one of six recipients of the prestigious Feminist Innovations in Monitoring and Evaluation (FIME) awards given by the Global Evaluation Initiative. It seeks to address gaps in evidence on feminist evaluation practices in crisis contexts by synthesizing feminist evaluation innovations and developing a practical, adaptable toolkit to support inclusive and transformative evaluation in rapidly changing, complex emergencies.

Insights from the Synthesis of Feminist Evaluation Innovations

The synthesis reviewed feminist evaluation innovations from 16 recent evaluations (2019-2024) conducted across diverse crises globally, commissioned by UN agencies, INGOs and other organisations. These evaluations spanned Asia, Africa, and Latin America and various crisis contexts including forced displacement and complex humanitarian emergencies, public health emergencies (cholera, Zika, COVID-19 pandemic), climate-induced disasters, and economic crisis.

The synthesis identified four types of feminist evaluation innovations, including both new approaches and adaptations of existing methods for fragile and conflict-affected settings, where the adaptions offer innovative responses to complexity, urgency, and equity concerns.

1. Design Innovations: These involve embedding feminist framings explicitly into evaluation architecture. For example, the 2021 UN Women evaluation on the Syrian refugee crisis applied a three-dimensional empowerment framework targeting individual autonomy, community relationships, and societal norms. Feminist-driven sampling strategies focused on marginalized subgroups - adolescent girls, women with disabilities, and displaced populations - using participatory snowball or respondent-driven methods, as seen in the 2023 UNHCR evaluation conducted in the context of forced displacement in the Central Sahel. These approaches ensured that marginalized voices were embedded in evaluation design from the outset.
2. Methodological Innovations:  Creative visual and narrative tools brought new depth to data collection. The 2019 Community Action on Zika project in Honduras and Colombia used participatory video to capture lived experiences, while UNICEF’s child-centered simulated recall in Malawi and Mozambique in 2024 enabled children to narrate their crisis realities through drawings and stories in the context of the Cholera epidemic and Cyclone Freddy. Techniques like the Most Significant Change and Outcome Harvesting methods were employed to co-define and validate meaningful change with communities.
3. Analytical Innovations: Many evaluation reports pioneered intersectional, identity-disaggregated analysis incorporating gender, age, disability, displacement, and ethnicity to map layered vulnerabilities and power dynamics. In examining gender-based violence in various humanitarian contexts, the 2023 UNFPA and UN Women evaluation systematically applied this lens to expose compounded protection risks faced by adolescent girls and displaced persons with disabilities. In other reports, community voices were elevated to core evidence using direct quotations and participatory sense-making, disrupting typical knowledge hierarchies.
4. Ethics and Reflexivity Innovations: M&E in FCV contexts faces a wide range of challenges, making safe and ethical practice especially important. Ethical safeguards moved beyond harm prevention to foreground care and empowerment in volatile contexts. Evaluations embedded comprehensive risk assessment and mitigation protocols, trauma-informed approaches, ethics of care, and layered ethical oversight. For instance, a 2023 UNHCR evaluation of humanitarian programming in the Central Sahel underwent review by both an institutional ethics committee and an information security office. This multi-layered ethical and data security review process reflected feminist evaluation ideals of care and accountability - extending oversight beyond participant welfare to systematically address privacy, information protection, and security risks.

Preview: The Feminist Evaluation Toolkit

The Feminist Evaluation Toolkit - developed from this synthesis - is designed for action. It equips evaluators with adaptable, practical tools and methods to conduct rigorous feminist evaluations in diverse crisis contexts, emphasizing usability and impact. Case studies punctuate each section, illustrating toolkit use in real-world crisis evaluations.

Toolkit sections reflect core feminist evaluation domains:

• Design: Clear guidance to embed feminist values from the outset. This includes tools for crisis dynamics mapping, stakeholder identification emphasizing intersectional vulnerabilities, and frameworks to systematically interrogate power at micro, meso, and macro levels. Importantly, the toolkit supports inclusive sampling through guidance on innovative techniques like purposive and beneficiary-driven snowball sampling to embed marginalised groups within evaluation design.
• Methods: Detailed, practical guidance for deploying arts-based and participatory data collection techniques that elevate marginalized voices. Methods include participatory video, photo walks, storytelling, and child-centered recall to enable rich self-representation even in crisis constraints. Stepwise guidance supports participatory evaluation approaches such as Most Significant Change (MSC), Outcome Harvesting (OH), and Outcome Mapping (OM), enabling in-depth capture of complex, non-linear change. The toolkit prioritizes accessible, culturally relevant methods that give marginalized populations space to self-represent safely.
• Analysis: Step-by-step guidance to implement identity-disaggregated intersectional analysis, combining layered social markers like gender, age, and displacement status. Guidance on elevating participant testimonies and narrative data as core datasets is included. The toolkit also includes community validation protocols and feedback loop templates to ensure that findings are contextually accurate, meaningful, and co-owned by those most affected.
• Ethics: Action-oriented protocols outline safety-first, trauma-informed, and feminist ethical practices tailored to crisis vulnerabilities. Included are risk assessment tools, safeguarding plan templates, and reflexivity guidelines supporting ongoing power-awareness among evaluators.

Call to Action: Join Consultation Workshops in October

The next vital step is partnership. Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs), Women-Led Organisations (WLOs), and feminist evaluation practitioners globally are invited to join consultation workshops in mid-October 2025 to validate the synthesis findings and co-create the next toolkit iteration. Your insights will ensure it meets frontline realities, is culturally attuned, and maximizes transformative impact.

Interested organizations and individuals can express their interest through this Google form by 11 October 2025 marking the beginning of a collaborative effort to advance feminist evaluation practice in humanitarian and crisis contexts.