ILRI’s Alessandra Galie publishes a chapter in a new feminist evaluation and research book

What does feminist theory and evaluation entail? How can it be used to inform agricultural research for development, and how different (or similar) is it from gender research? These are some of the questions, which could be important for beginning researchers and gender scientists.

A new book, Feminist evaluation and research: Theory and practice, published by Guilford Press, seeks to answer these questions.

The book, which provides an overview of feminist theory and research strategies, and explores the process of integrating feminist theory and methods into research and evaluation practice, contains a chapter authored by Alessandra Galie, a gender scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

In the chapter ‘Feminist research approaches to empowerment in Syria’, Galie highlights an assessment of how women farmers in Syria felt about taking part in participatory plant breeding (PPB) programs and the impact of this participation on their (women farmers) empowerment. According to Galie, ‘when used to evaluate empowerment, feminist evaluation can enhance effectiveness and equity of interventions meant for empowerment of small-scale farmers.’

Galie concludes by saying that ‘feminist evaluation is needed to enhance local understandings of empowerment’. Further, the chapter highlights that feminist evaluation plays a major role in increasing the capability of respondents to make informed decisions and voice their needs.

You can order for the book from here.