by Julia Espinosa-Fajardo
On the path towards consolidating evaluation, the 2030 Agenda has given us an imperative mandate: ‘leave no one behind’. However, when we look closely at public policies and programmes, we realise that not all social needs receive the same attention, that implementation does not reach everyone equally, and that their impacts are not always distributed equitably.
Indeed, if we fail to take account of the various intertwined inequalities at play in each context, policies and their evaluation tend to reproduce these inequalities and, at times, reinforce them. At this point, it is essential to incorporate intersectionality into evaluation. What does this approach bring to our field? This question is central for those of us who view evaluation as a key tool for equity and social justice.
Below, we share some reflections on this subject, which are explored in greater detail in the chapter ‘Gender and Intersectionality in Public Policy Evaluation: Theoretical Developments and Practical Implications’ (Espinosa Fajardo, 2025).
Evaluation faces a paradox that is hard to ignore. We have never had so many methodologies, tools, data sources and technical capabilities. However, the effective influence of evaluation on public decision-making remains uneven and, in many contexts, surprisingly limited, with institutional advances and setbacks, steps forward and backward, even in initiatives considered to be benchmarks.
For many years, evaluation was underpinned by a powerful promise: to produce evidence on what works and what does not, in order to guide fairer, more efficient and more democratic public decisions. In this context, evaluation was not merely a technical tool, but a political instrument in the best sense of the term: a means of expanding freedom, strengthening accountability and bringing the exercise of power closer to the public. Knowing the results meant, in theory, empowering people to demand better policies and a more transparent use of resources.
Cities around the world, including many in Latin America, are incorporating artificial intelligence solutions into their urban services: video surveillance and facial recognition systems for public safety, traffic management, citizen services, waste collection and tourism promotion.
A few months ago, I sat for more than two hours with a group of women, listening to their experiences with a social program. There was no recorder running. I held no questionnaire. There was silence, pause, chocolate, and a trust that had taken weeks to build. In that conversation, I learned more about the real determinants of access to health services than from any dataset I had ever processed.
In contexts of urban vulnerability, evaluation is never neutral. Every evaluation reflects a way of seeing reality, deciding what counts as a problem, what is considered an achievement, and who gets to interpret it. From this perspective came the article 
When we set out to evaluate Co-Inspira, a peacebuilding initiative in Colombia, we knew we were facing an unconventional challenge. This was not about assessing a traditional intervention, but something far more complex: a Systemic Action Research (SAR) process that was, in itself, already a collective exercise in knowledge generation.
What happens when those who have historically been evaluated become co-evaluators? How can such a change be fostered, managed, and capitalized upon? Is it possible to promote participatory evaluation from within public institutions? How?
‘Readiness’ is an English language term that is difficult to translate into Spanish as it encompasses various themes: preparation, availability, propensity, timeliness, agility, competency, willingness – among others. In the Spanish version of this entry, we use ‘availability’ (‘disposición’) with the understanding that it covers the other themes. In the field of evaluation, readiness is foremost across the first two steps of Utilization-focused Evaluation (UFE) as proposed by Michael Quinn Patton (2008). Readiness is also referenced in other fields, for instance in communication strategy design (Ramelan, 2014).
I’m genuinely delighted to share a personal take on Chapter 7: Participatory evaluation of a public transport support policy: an inclusion and transformation perspective – Jalisco (Mexico), recently published in the book Evaluation, Democracy and Transformation: Experiences of Participatory Evaluation in Latin America. I co-wrote it with Sugey Salazar and Selene Michi, and together with other colleagues we reflect on what it really means to carry out public policy evaluation using participatory approaches from within the public sector.