The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) participated in the Evaluation Cooperation Group (ECG) Gender Practitioner Workshop, which was organized by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank. The workshop took place on 27 and 28 September 2017 in Washington D. C., United States.

The workshop brought together evaluators from various international financial institutions that are members of the ECG such as the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Global Environment Facility, Inter-American Development Bank, International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, as well as UN Women. The sessions stimulated a discussion on the approaches, challenges, and solutions to integrate gender in evaluation in both projects and country strategies to improve the methods and the quality of evaluations.

Ms Catrina Perch, IOE Evaluation Officer, held a joint session with the Independent Evaluation Group on evaluating gender in community driven development and rural development projects. During this session IOE presented the conceptual framework used in a Synthesis Evaluation  Report to identify 'gender transformative change'  in line with the 2013 agenda for sustainable development.

A common characteristic of transformative approaches is that they challenge existing social norms and the distribution of power and resources. The session also discussed ADB’s  and IEG's experience in evaluating community driven development and rural development components of agriculture projects from a gender lens.