Date: Saturday, May 3, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
My name is Donna Podems. I am an evaluator and a feminist, and sometimes a feminist evaluator. With 25 years of evaluation experience, I have worked with a diverse range of clients across various sectors, including agriculture, health, finance, education, environment, and gender and human rights, in many countries.
I am thrilled to share my Feminist Evaluation Model (FEM), an approach to feminist evaluation that promotes women’s equality through a comprehensive evaluative process. Over the past 10 years, I have developed, tested, and refined this model. The FEM provides a feminist approach grounded in theory and practice, which can be interpreted and applied situationally. Rather than providing rules or a step-by-step approach, the FEM offers guidance. It aims to support evaluators in conducting a credible, useful, and inspiring evaluation process that results in empirically supported actions that are contextually, socially, and culturally appropriate to address gender equality.
The holistic feminist model combines feminist ideals with three essential components: knowledge construction, evaluation theory and practice, and nine effectiveness principles. The model also outlines what it means to be a FEM evaluator, describing the necessary knowledge and skill areas required to effectively co-implement the model
I have one super-duper hot tip: A person does not need to be a feminist or an expert on feminism to implement the FEM. A person does need to view evaluation as a process that can effectively be used to address gender inequities and bring about social change for women.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.