Introduction to Gender, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

This issue of Gender & Development sets out to examine the topic of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) from a gender equality and women’s rights perspective. This is the first issue to focus on MEL as a topic in its own right, over the whole two decades since the journal’s inception. In that time, gender mainstreaming in development agencies has led to increased interest in gender-sensitive methods of evaluating the impact of development. This issue offers a unique opportunity to share different experiences of monitoring, evaluating and learning about the impact of development and humanitarian work on women’s empowerment and gender equality. On the face of it, MEL may seem to be a somewhat dry, technical topic. Yet it is in fact profoundly political. We would even suggest that a good MEL system is an activist’s best friend! MEL provides feminists with the means to explore the gendered impact of programmes and projects on the women and girls, and men and boys, whose lives are affected by it. To what extent have development programmes supported women in their daily lives, and in their struggles for equality and justice? MEL can render development policymakers, practitioners and researchers accountable to the individuals and groups they aim to support, as well as accountable to the funders and supporters of that work. The articles in this issue capture the knowledge of a range of development practitioners and women’s rights activists. They situate their analysis of real experiences of MEL in the context of the role it plays in driving forward real change for women (and men) living in poverty in the global South, challenging complex inequalities stemming from gender, race, and class. Most (though not all) are staff members in development organisations of different kinds. Others make their living as independent consultants. Authors are drawn from many different kinds of organisation, and come from both the global South and North. All have tried to share their experience accessibly, making what is often very complex and technical material as clear as possible to non-MEL specialists. In this brief Introduction to the issue, we provide some context, offering a brief account of the ways research into the impact of development on women and girls has shaped gender and development policy and practice as we see it today. If MEL approaches are underpinned by a strong gender analysis and feminist commitment to