Measuring Gendered Impact in Private Sector Development: Technical Reflections and Guidance for Programmes

From Adam Smith International. Private sector development (PSD) practitioners are increasingly pursuing strategies aimed at increasing income and economically empowering poor women. For programmes to credibly prove that these strategies impact poor women – and to improve this impact through adaptive design and delivery – monitoring and results management (MRM) systems must be capable of understanding differentiated gendered impact. Where MRM systems are truly gender-responsive, they serve a function beyond accurate sex-disaggregated results reporting, and are crucial in influencing programme design, for example, the effective identification and profiling of female target beneficiaries during scoping for sector selection (who tend conventionally to be ‘missed’ or misunderstood, particularly within male-headed households).

Nonetheless, a number of measurement challenges remain. Most pressing among these, is the lack of clarity on who to count as a beneficiary when measuring changes to income. Crucially, the different ways in which this is approached tell very different stories as to the gendered impact of a PSD programme.