Gender and intersectionality in evaluation: Politics and practices to promote change

Equity and gender equality have been introduced in the evaluation theory and practice since the late nineties. As a result of Beijing Conference (1995), the inclusion of a gender perspective in the evaluation of public policies started to be considered as a part of the gender mainstreaming strategy and, as such, a way for promoting more effective attention to gender equality in the public policies. In the last decade, equity has also become a central topic in evaluation. Nowadays, and under the umbrella of the 2030 Agenda, gender equality and equity have become two key issues, understood both as specifically targeted and as cross-cutting, to ensure no one will be left behind. In this scenario, feminist and gender studies have also turned the attention to the concept of intersectionality, and the need to understand how gender interacts with other inequality axis and to integrate an intersectional perspective in gender analysis. Consequently, some international organizations and public institutions have also begun to demand the evaluation of policies that pay attention to the intersection of different inequalities (based on socio-economic position, gender, ethnic origin, etc.). The final goal is to be accountable as well as to achieve more effective and transformative policies. In this regard, during the last two decades, there have been some theoretical approaches to include a gender perspective in the evaluation of every policy (Stephens et al., 2018; Bustelo, 2017; Brisolara et al., 2014; Podems, 2010;), as well as to evaluate gender policies (Espinosa-Fajardo & Bustelo, 2019), including gender mainstreaming strategies (Bustelo, 2003; Moser, 2005). In parallel, there have also been an interesting literature on intersectionality approaches (Hancock, 2017; Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009; Crenshaw, 1994). This paper explores the different theoretical contributions in order to (re)think and discuss about evaluation politics and practices and how both of them resist or integrate a gender+ (gender + intersectionality) perspective.