Addressing gender inequalities in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence: An evaluation of the World Bank Group’s support

This report evaluates the World Bank Group's support for gender equality in fragile, conflict, and violence-affected countries, focusing on women's economic empowerment and gender-based violence.

It assesses the effectiveness, sustainability, and scalability of interventions through case studies from six countries.

Key content

Key takeaways from the resource include:

Introduction

• Purpose: This report by the World Bank (2023) evaluates the World Bank Group's (WBG) efforts to address gender inequalities in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). It focuses on the WBG’s support for women’s and girls’ economic empowerment (WGEE) and the prevention of and response to gender-based violence (GBV).
• Methodology: The evaluation employs a mixed-methods approach, including a review of WBG documentation, interviews with stakeholders, and case studies from six countries. It assesses the design, implementation, and outcomes of various projects to identify best practices and areas for improvement.
• Limitations of the evaluation: The evaluation faced challenges such as data limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted in-person fieldwork. Additionally, the representativeness of the findings is constrained by the focus on a limited number of case study countries.
• Road map: The report is structured into several key sections: the challenges of promoting transformational change, strategies for achieving results, factors enabling and constraining change, and conclusions and recommendations.

The challenge of promoting transformational change

• The challenge: Transformational change involves achieving deep, systemic, and sustainable impact on gender inequalities. This requires addressing deeply entrenched social norms and institutional barriers.
• Strengths and weaknesses in planning for transformational change: The evaluation found that while some projects demonstrated strong planning and relevance, many lacked depth, sustainability, or scale. There were inconsistencies in how projects integrated gender considerations and aimed for transformative outcomes.
• The trade-offs: The WBG faced trade-offs among scale, depth, and sustainability. Achieving all three simultaneously proved challenging. Projects also had to balance short-term humanitarian needs with long-term development goals.

Getting to results

• Learning from implementation to improve results: The evaluation highlights the importance of adaptive management and learning from implementation experiences. Successful projects often used gender assessments and incorporated lessons learned to refine their approaches.
• Shifting from a project to a country focus: The report advocates for shifting from a project-centric approach to a more strategic, country-level engagement. This includes integrating gender equality objectives across all activities and ensuring continuity and coherence in gender-focused interventions.
• Measuring results: There is a need for better monitoring and evaluation frameworks to capture outcomes related to WGEE and GBV. Current frameworks often fail to adequately track the impact and sustainability of interventions.

Factors enabling and constraining transformational change

• Prioritization of women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, gender-based violence, and gender Inequalities: The evaluation found that projects with a clear focus on WGEE and GBV were more likely to achieve transformational change. Prioritizing these issues in project design and implementation is crucial.
• Financial and human resources: Adequate funding and skilled personnel are essential for successful gender-focused interventions. Projects that allocated sufficient resources to gender issues tended to have better outcomes.
• Modalities of engagement, collaboration, and coordination: Effective collaboration with local stakeholders, including women’s organizations, and coordination with other donors and partners are critical for achieving sustainable change.
• Contextual factors: The local context, including sociopolitical dynamics and cultural norms, significantly affects the success of gender-focused projects. Tailoring interventions to the specific context is essential for their effectiveness.

Conclusions and recommendations

The report concludes that while the WBG has made progress in addressing gender inequalities in FCV settings, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed. Recommendations include improving planning and design of gender-focused projects, enhancing monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and fostering better collaboration and coordination with local stakeholders and other development partners.