Gender Equality

The evaluation’s purpose is to review Sweden’s present support to Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs) in line with the current Strategy for Sweden’s Development Cooperation with Bangladesh 2021-2025. The focus is to assess the Embassy’s support to women’s and girls’ rights through their WRO portfolio, assessing what has worked well for the organisations, and what more could be done by Sida to support the continued development of a vibrant civil society in Bangladesh, ever mindful of the general decline in freedom of speech and ongoing backlash on human rights and gender equality. The evaluation’s overall observation is that the organisations have achieved the outcomes intended, bringing the organisations and their partners on a sound, gender-transformative path. The lives of the women engaged in the work of all four partners have changed fundamentally. Because of this, the Embassy and Sida are recommended to continue ensuring a sound space of operation for the successful WROs through core funding and to
maintain a lead dialogue role towards their CSO and funding cooperation partners alike. The recommendations furthermore propose ways to accelerate a broader reach for added social norms change.

This Learning Evaluation of the Gender Approach of Olof Palmes Internationella Center (‘the Center’) was commissioned by the
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency’s Civil Society Unit (Sida CIVSAM) and conducted from December 2022 to
March 2024. Although room for improvement was found, the Center’s support to gender equality and mainstreaming, in line with its
self-identification as a feminist organisation, was found to be largely relevant to the needs of its partner organisations and the
constituencies they serve. Internal coherence within Sida is good, and external coherence with the work of other civil society
organisations and development partners was found in sampled countries. Examples of results and outcomes and higher-level impact
were also found in sampled countries, with contributions to transformative change noted at country level. Such contributions could be
enhanced though with stronger and clearer systems, structures and routines applied during project design and implementation. The
Center’s approach of providing individual capacity building and supporting organisational development has led to benefits that can be
expected to be sustainable.