In reviewing IFAD’s performance in promoting gender mainstreaming in its country programmes, the Consultation on the Eighth Replenishment of Fund’s Resources (2008) requested IFAD’s Independent Office of Evaluation to: “Conduct an evaluation of IFAD’s performance on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Based on the findings of the evaluation, the Executive Board will decide on the need to develop a corporate policy and implementation strategy on gender”. In response to this request, the Independent Office of Evaluation undertook this evaluation and completed it at the end of 2010. This was the first time an independent corporate-level evaluation on gender was undertaken in IFAD.

The evaluation had three main objectives:

• Assess the relevance of IFAD’s strategic guidance on gender equality and women’s empowerment to IFAD’s mandate and to its country partners; its clarity and coherence with corporate policy and guidelines and its consistency with the best practices of other development assistance agencies;
• Assess the performance and results of IFAD’s efforts to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in its country programmes and business processes;  and
• Generate a series of lessons learnt and recommendations that will assist the Board and IFAD management in deciding on the need for a gender policy and in determining the future strategic and operational directions of the Fund on gender.

The evaluation had six building blocks:

• Benchmarking study on IFAD’s strategic guidance on gender in relation to comparators (other agencies and IFAD’s policies);
• Meta evaluation on gender related performance and lessons learnt on gender equality and women’s empowerment in completed IFAD projects evaluated by the Independent Office of Evaluation;
• Review of a selected sample of the ongoing portfolio (COSOPs and projects);
• Assessment of operational performance and results through selected country/project visits;
• Assessment of IFAD’s corporate business processes relating to gender; and
• Assessment of IFAD’s human resources policy relating to gender equality and empowerment.