Ministry of Social Development strengthen internal monitoring and evaluation systems towards advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Jordan

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MOSD staff attend the gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation trainings organized by UN Women with the support of AICS. Photo: UN Women/ Majd Abu Zaghlan

Ministry of Social Development staff and members of its ICD task force participate in a training on gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation organized by UN Women on 27 August 2020. Photo: UN Women/Majd Abu Zaghlan
 
In 2020, the Ministry of Social Development (MOSD), with technical assistance from UN Women, developed its first institutional capacity development action plan to effectively mainstream gender equality and women’s empowerment into national systems and policies. To operationalize the plan, UN Women organized a series of trainings for MOSD staff and members of its dedicated task force on gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation, which took place from 27 August to 9 October 2020.

Aligned with national commitments and priorities, this initiative is part of a two-year programme towards enhancing gender mainstreaming across all directorates and all levels of the Ministry’s work which is generously supported by Government of Italy and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS).

Effective gender mainstreaming at the policy level requires alignment and integration with broader national planning processes as well as institutional capacities to collect and access relevant data and analysis. As such, the training featured an inclusive approach to engage MOSD staff with grounded skills to develop gender sensitive indicators, monitoring and evaluation plans, while providing participants with key principles and guidelines on gender-sensitive strategic planning and risk management. “The training helped me to better understand essential concepts related to monitoring and evaluation, including the impact of implementing these mechanisms for achieving gender equality.” said Muna Al-Rfou, Head of MOSD Gender Unit. 

The central objective of the programme is aligned with MOSD’s Strategic Plan 2017-2021, with a specific focus on empowering women through the adoption and implementation of gender-sensitive tools and approaches under policy formulation, planning and service-provision. Such vision is further underpinned by national priorities under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a particular focus on Goal 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment, whereas the partnership with UN Women is fostering opportunities to share knowledge and experiences in this field.

“Gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation systems allows us to measure and evaluate gender-related changes over time, showing how far and in what ways the gender equality objectives are being achieved.” explained Ola Jundi, Monitoring and Evaluation Analyst at UN Women who conducted part of the training.

In addition, MOSD and UN Women have worked together to develop a gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation manual, which will be used to assist the internal task force members to continue training MOSD staff members working across the ministry.