Gender-Responsive Approaches to Measuring Aid Effectiveness: Options and Issues

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness has been strongly criticized as both gender blind and for using a technocratic approach to measuring aid effectiveness. This article analyzes three initiatives for providing a gender dimension to aid effectiveness developed by gender equality advocates following the signing of the declaration, and their proposed gender-sensitive indicators and approaches to engendering aid effectiveness. The analysis will consider the ways in which gender equality measurement is resisted and transformed within each initiative and what is subsequently made known about gender equality through the categories and tools developed.