By: Kat Watson
Over my decade and half of working in the international 'development' sector, I have witnessed worrying trends in the way that we measure progress. Namely, a lack of creativity and a default mode that seeks to quantify and commodify people's lives, decisions and identities. We want to know the number of young people reached by sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services or information, but not their quality. We want to know the percentage decrease in the prevalence of child marriage, without knowing whether those girls' life opportunities have been enhanced through life skills training. We want to know how effective women's rights organizations are at changing policies and laws, without investing in the sustainability of their movements. What gets lost in the focus on numbers and statistics is a deep understanding of the ever-evolving, complex realities of the human experience.
Yet, my experience and that of many colleagues around me shows that seemingly small changes in the way we conduct research and evaluation can be radical in their effect. Bringing feminist values to research, for instance, creates space for the voices of activists to tell their own story of progress on their own terms and encourages us to remove our own voices as researchers. At its heart, it's about epistemic justice – who controls the narrative.
Embodying feminist values in research and evaluation is not always easy to do within the current constraints of the international 'development' sector and the measurement frameworks we use. However, after a recent piece of research conducted for a women's fund, I tried to flesh out the principles that we adhered to during the research - some more successfully than others. On reflection, however, these can perhaps more adequately be described as 'commitments':
Do not make decisions alone – ever: The movement is so much bigger than us as individuals, and it benefits from weaving together a plurality of voices at every stage.
Remove your voice from the narrative as much as is humanly possible: Try not to tell the story in the way that you think donors want you to tell it but, rather, use a framing that makes sense to the activists and organizations working on the ground and does justice to their work.
Move away from siloed approaches: Activists are often working at the intersection of many movements – from labour and environment to sexual and reproductive rights. Tell their story in all its complexity, and don't reduce the outcomes to those that 'fit neatly' into the log frame set out at the beginning of the project.
Broaden the definition of what an 'outcome' is: Meeting feminist activists, organizations and movements 'where they are' means accepting that change is a long journey. For instance, policy change might be unattainable during a short term project, but that on their journey to that ultimate goal, the outcome that they're seeking is about laying the groundwork. THAT, and not the policy change, is the outcome that should be measured.
Respect the time and energy that research takes, at the expense of activists' work: Expectations around how much time should be given by participants in research or evaluation needs to be evaluated, particularly in the context of COVID-19. They are all struggling with competing demands, as well as their own self-care. The benefits of participation should be equivalent to – or exceed — the time and energy that participants give.
Communicate intentionally, with courtesy and humility: The way that we communicate with everyone involved in a study – whether it's participants, organizational representatives, ethics committees, clients or colleagues – should be done with intentionality and courtesy. At every step, the priority is the welfare of the human beings involved.
What all of these have in common is that they complicate the way we measure progress; they take more effort, time and thought. Yet, feminist principles in research are truer to the human experience than methods we currently use. Going forward, donor organizations must embrace the chaos and messiness of the struggle for human rights in each context. We must all accept that the journey toward our ultimate goals is far from linear and often departs from a predefined theory of change; not to mention, how change happens in one country is never the same as how it happens in another. The narrative that will emerge will be complex, yes, but so rich in its representation of the diversity that exists in the world and far more illuminating in terms of the needs of movements, NGOs and advocates going forward.
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