What does feminist evaluation offer for M&E in fragile and conflict-affected settings?

In this blog, Rai Sengupta examines how feminist principles, including intersectionality, systems thinking, participatory practice, and political reflexivity, can strengthen accountability and justice in crisis contexts. Rai is a recipient of the Fostering Feminist Innovation in Evaluation (FIME) small award program for her project 'From Insights to Action: Advancing Feminist Evaluation Innovations in Crisis Contexts'. 

A feminist evaluator is not a neutral observer but an activist practitioner: someone who combines rigorous evidence generation with sustained advocacy to ensure that evaluations contribute to systemic justice and equity. This role is fundamental to achieving meaningful change, including in crisis and fragile settings where power imbalances and vulnerability are heightened.

What is feminist evaluation?

Feminist evaluation operates as a way of thinking – one that interrogates how knowledge is produced, whose perspectives are centred, and how evidence can be mobilised in the service of equity and social transformation (Podems, 2010). At its core, feminist evaluation scrutinises the power relations that shape lived experiences, explores how gendered and intersecting inequities generate social injustice, and challenges evaluators to use their findings to advocate for change (Sielbeck-Bowen et al., 2002; Podems, 2010; Crupi & Godden, 2024). Ensuring meaningful participation in M&E processes is therefore not merely a methodological choice but a political act, recognising knowledge as a form of power and insisting that diverse narratives – including those of women, gender-diverse individuals, and other marginalised groups – be treated as equally authoritative.

The concepts of intersectionality and systems thinking are core a core part of feminist evaluation. An intersectionality lens illuminates how overlapping identities interact with systemic power structures and crisis conditions to intensify marginalisation, enabling more responsive, equitable, and contextually grounded crisis response interventions. Rather than treating gender groups as homogeneous, feminist evaluation attends to social differences within groups, such as LGBTQIA+ identities, urban or rural location, marital or family status, disability, and cross-border organising, (Connelly et al., 2000; Daigle, 202; Mohanty, 1997). A systems perspective supports this by examining how embedded systemic drives, such as political, colonial and donor power relations, perpetuate exclusion and inequity in humanitarian aid (Meadows, 2001). Bringing these two lenses together through feminist evaluation helps illuminate how compounded vulnerabilities operate within in crisis situations and why it is essential to understand and target root causes rather than symptoms.

Beyond neutrality: The evaluator as change agent

Feminist evaluation shares substantial overlap with several other evaluation and research approaches, such as participatory, utilisation-focused, transformative, realist, and decolonial methodologies, which similarly emphasise context, voice, justice, and systemic inquiry. While many gender approaches incorporate select feminist elements, feminist evaluation differs by interrogating why gendered differences exist, challenging the power structures that sustain them, and valuing intersectionality, reflexivity, and diverse gender identities.

This goes beyond merely documenting women’s experiences. In humanitarian crises, where evaluation often defaults to counting outputs such as food distributions, shelter units, or cash transfers, these systemic concerns are easily obscured. Output-driven evaluations risk overlooking exclusion, entrenched power hierarchies, and unaddressed trauma, and often leave out the perspectives of groups who experience the sharpest edges of crisis.

Traditional paradigms also tend to cast evaluators as neutral observers who are expected to measure effectiveness while remaining detached from the social and political dynamics they document. Feminist evaluation rejects this posture of neutrality by explicitly locating the evaluator within systems of power and positioning them as a reflective, politically engaged actor.

Rooted in feminist theory and research, feminist evaluators argue that objectivity is both unattainable and undesirable when studying lived realities marked by gender-based inequalities (Podems, 2010; Seigart, 2005). Feminist evaluation is often defined as a way of thinking about evaluation that openly asserts its values, rather than a fixed framework (Hughes, 2002), and emphasizes participatory, empowering, and social justice agendas. It. The feminist evaluator is an engaged actor, questioning authority, examining whose stories are told, and actively seeking social change. As Sielbeck-Bowen et al. (2002) put it, “evaluation is a political activity,” shaped by the perspectives, experiences, and knowledge of those who carry it out.

By interrogating power relations, amplifying marginalised voices, and prioritising contextually grounded knowledge, feminist evaluation broadens the very notion of what counts as evidence and who gets to define it. In doing so, it shifts evaluation toward a form of accountability that centres equity, inclusivity, and the transformative potential of humanitarian action. Evaluation becomes a vehicle for advancing social justice and evaluators become allies capable of amplifying initiatives led by women, non-binary, and gender-diverse actors, and holding humanitarian systems accountable for justice (UN Women, 2021; UNICEF, 2025).

Methods that empower: Valuing diverse voices and ways of knowing

Knowledge production is not value-free. It replicates power imbalances if evaluators privilege certain facts, communities, or narratives. Feminist evaluation actively questions how facts are obtained and whose truths are heard.

In feminist evaluation, knowledge is not limited to what is typically considered objective or technical, but also encompasses emotional, experiential, and intuitive ways of knowing (Minnich, 1990; Patton, 2002; Hughes, 2002). In practice, this might come in the form of trauma narratives, coping strategies, and grassroots knowledge from women-led, non-binary, and other community-based organisations, which can provide vital depth and context that other forms of evidence alone cannot capture.

By foregrounding multiple ways of knowing and engaging women and other marginalised gender identities as co-creators in evaluation, feminist evaluators support genuine co-learning, ensuring that evidence leads toward action.  Instead of relying on externally imposed methods or indicators, feminist evaluation emphasises collective processes that centre the voices and leadership of marginalised groups in shaping questions, choosing methods, interpreting findings, and guiding how learning is used. In crisis and humanitarian contexts, those most at risk, such as displaced people, survivors of violence, or marginalised gender communities, often hold the most urgent insights for shaping safe and effective interventions. Co-deciding evaluation approaches and methods can strengthen the legitimacy, relevance, and ownership of evaluations and helps ensure that evidence contributes to safe, context-sensitive, and actionable change.

Overcoming the challenges: Resistance and reluctance

Conducting a feminist evaluation in FCV settings is not without its challenges. Resistance to feminist evaluation often stems from discomfort with the terminology (“feminist”) or misunderstandings about what qualifies as feminist evaluation (Podems, 2010).  Some fear backlash if feminist principles are strongly advocated, while others assume feminist evaluation is interchangeable with gender-responsive approaches. A further challenge is the limited number of published examples, particularly in crisis contexts, where feminist evaluation illustrations are comparatively scarce (Podems, 2010).

Institutional challenges also play a role. Limited support, resource shortages, and dominant humanitarian paradigms that often prioritize quick, technical solutions create further barriers. Safety and ethical concerns further complicate the inclusion of marginalized voices in volatile environments, requiring evaluators to remain aware of risks to themselves and participants.

Alongside this, many humanitarian actors view their role as neutral, technical, or deliberately apolitical. This reluctance is reinforced by the realities of operating in fragile environments, where conflict-sensitive practice is essential and evaluation must be designed to avoid inadvertently heightening tensions or creating new risks. There are situations where openly naming gendered power structures or inequities could escalate sensitivities, expose communities to backlash, or undermine access and trust.

Applying feminist principles in FCV settings therefore requires a strategic, context-responsive approach, ensuring issues are surfaced while staying within do-no-harm and conflict-sensitive principles. This can involve acting as reflective allies, negotiating terminology sensitively, and deploying feminist principles flexibly without compromising core commitments. In these contexts, being feminist does not mean being loud; it means being deliberate. Practitioners make intentional choices about which issues to surface, how to frame them, and when and where to present findings in order to maximise safety, influence, and usefulness. “Being political” in constrained environments may involve simply documenting who is excluded, analysing how gender norms shape access to services, highlighting barriers faced by marginalised groups, and identifying opportunities for equitable change.

Building allies, influencing systems

A core principle of feminist evaluation is that the decision to apply a feminist approach should not rest solely with external evaluators or policymakers (Daigle, 2024). It requires deliberation with local communities, grassroots organisations, and women-, non-binary-, and gender-diverse-led groups, who are best placed to identify pressing needs, priorities, and culturally appropriate ways of working.

In FCV contexts, evaluation has often been dominated by external actors who impose their own agendas, leaving little room for local knowledge or priorities. Feminist evaluation explicitly challenges this dynamic, positioning evaluation as a collaborative, context-driven approach that recognises multiple visions of feminism and prioritises the lived experiences of those affected by crisis It aims to share power, rather than impose it (Duriesmith, 2018).

To advance this mandate, feminist evaluators can:

• Forge strategic coalitions with women’s rights organizations, women-led networks, and groups representing non-binary, trans, and other gender-diverse communities, ensuring their expertise and leadership shape all stages of the evaluative process, thereby enhancing legitimacy, relevance, and community ownership.
• Implement participatory and inclusive methodologies that prioritize voices of marginalized and crisis-affected populations while rigorously safeguarding ethics, consent, confidentiality, and agency in volatile environments.
• Frame advocacy within humanitarian imperatives such as dignity, justice, and operational effectiveness, articulating evaluation findings in ways that resonate with humanitarian actors and foster systemic uptake.
• Champion accountability beyond program outputs, interrogating donor funding structures and decision-making hierarchies to dismantle inequitable power arrangements and amplify underrepresented perspectives.
• Promote reflexive learning and capacity development among evaluators and humanitarian stakeholders, positioning feminist evaluation as an adaptive, context-responsive praxis requiring ongoing critical self-awareness and knowledge exchange.

By integrating rigorous power analysis, centering and amplifying marginalized narratives, and strategically mobilizing evidence to advance justice-oriented agendas, feminist evaluators possess the unique capacity to catalyze profound systemic transformation. This transformative potential ensures that humanitarian responses move decisively beyond immediate relief efforts to foster equitable, sustainable recovery and fundamentally reshape the power structures and social dynamics that perpetuate vulnerability and exclusion.