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Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Middle East and Maghreb 2015-16 to 2019-20: Evaluation Summary

About the evaluation

¶¶ÒùÊÓƵ’s International Assistance Evaluation Division conducted a thematic evaluation of Canada’s international assistance programming on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the Middle East and the Maghreb for the period 2015-16 to 2019-20. The evaluation aimed to inform decision-making, promote learning and improve programming. The evaluation examined gender equality and empowerment results, and the extent to which the department was positioned to achieve those type of results.

Key findings

• Canada's vision for achieving gender equality and women's empowerment aligned with project participants’ own definitions and aspirations.
• Focus group discussions with project participants revealed that women felt empowered and more self-confident through participation in gender equality programming. However, project reports typically did not provide strong outcome-level reporting.
• Women’s empowerment benefitted from an enabling environment, with support from family, civil society, communities, government, laws, and the private sector.
• Departmental policies, the gender equality assessment process, and support from gender experts positioned ¶¶ÒùÊÓƵ to achieve gender equality results.
• The introduction of the Feminist International Assistance Policy was not matched with a timely expansion of related communication, training, tools, and policies for staff or partners. 
• The COVID-19 pandemic exposed digital empowerment as an emerging need and an opportunity for women in the “new normal.”

Recommendations

1. Increase the focus on enabling  the environment to support women’s empowerment, considering family, community and institutional structures.
2. Coordinate efforts for increased accessibility of gender equality resources across MGS (Gender Equality Division), IRD (Peace and Stabilizations Operations), and KGAI (Partnerships for Development Innovation – Impact Assessment).
3. Collect empowerment data using women-focused, participatory methods, to better report on outcomes that complement existing output level reporting.