Gender analysis
Gender analysis is one of many “lenses” that can be applied to evaluation. The gender analysis lens brings issues related to gender to the surface (e.g., How are program outcomes different for men and women? Why? What are the experiences of transgender and non-binary people in the program?).
Sex OR Gender?
Sex describes the physical characteristics associated with being male or female (e.g., hormones, chromosomes, reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics).*
Gender is the social or cultural “baggage” that comes with being a man or woman (e.g., the expectations of being masculine or feminine, the characteristics associated with being masculine or feminine, and what’s considered appropriate behaviour for men and women).**
Certain types of programs obviously lend themselves well to a gender analysis, such as women’s shelters, domestic abuse programs, or programs designed for new mothers. However, it is important to remember that everyone has a gender (not just women), so gender analysis could be applied to almost any situation. For example, did a program aimed at reducing homelessness benefit women, men, and transgender people differently?
Conducting a gender analysis in evaluation means questioning your own assumptions about sex and gender, then trying to understand how gender might be a factor in the program being evaluated. A good starting point for gender analysis is to determine whether the program is gender neutral or gender aware.
A gender neutral program is one that pays no attention to gender. For example, a program designed to reduce homelessness that provides emergency shelter on extremely cold nights for all adults.
A gender aware program is one that considers gender-based inequality and how their programs might reinforce this inequality. To use the homelessness example again, a gender aware program might recognize that single women are more likely to have custody of children than single men, therefore a shelter for adults-only might actually be less accessible to women than men. Or a shelter that is technically open to everyone may be a hostile environment toward transgender and non-binary folks, mean it does not serve everyone equally from a gender analysis perspective.
* There are more sexes than male and female due to natural variations in chromosomes, hormones, and physical characteristics. The sexes resulting from this biological diversity are called intersex conditions, and include for example Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), Klinefelter syndrome, and 5-alpha reductase deficiency.
** There are more genders than man and woman because genders vary across time and across cultures. Some people are assigned one gender at birth but later transition to a different gender (i.e., transgender people), some people identify with a combination of masculinity and femininity (i.e., gender fluid or gender queer people), while others may identify with genders completely outside of the man-woman binary (i.e., non-binary people, gender non-conforming people, Two Spirit Indigenous people, and other “third genders”).