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Evaluation Process
::APPENDICES [for downloads]::

Complete Evaluation Report in Spanish (DOC - 197KB)

Women's Information for Empowerment

[Latin America and Caribbean-Mexico]

Organization Name: Modemmujer
Contact Person: Beatriz Cavazos
Type of ICT Initiative: News and Information

Modemujer-website

Project Background

One of the first women's networks in the region to use email to disseminate information to work with their constituency was Modemmujer. In 1992, Beatriz Cavazos Siller, from Mexico, one of the co-founders of Modemmujer, a successful information network in the region, started to use email to send information to Yucatan, in the south of the country, where women's organisations felt isolated and had very little access to any kind of information. Email was seen as a cheap means of communication in contrast to the cost of telephone calls, faxes and post.

In 1995, a few weeks before the 4th UN World Conference on Women, Modemmujer launched its information campaign with a small email infrastructure and training sessions to enable its members to work effectively. This initiative became a big success, not only in Mexico, but also throughout the Latin American continent. Since then, Modemmujer has built a reputation for effectively adapting electronic tools, and integrating these with other traditional communications tools. Their work has encouraged participation, intercommunication and linkage among individual women and women's organisations. Through its training activities, Modemmujer has helped prepare women to effectively use ICTs and raise their awareness about the importance of women's ownership of technology. Its information and documentation services reach about 1,300 subscribers in Mexico and the rest of Latin America twice a week.

The overall objective of Modemmujer's work is to promote the use and ownership of ICTs in the women's movement, from a gender perspective. By doing so, ICTs become a tool for advancing women's rights, by advocating proposals and by disseminating and supporting the women's movement activities. These activities and proposals can be turned into initiatives that transform women's conditions.

The specific aims are:

  • To serve as a space for conducting dialogues among different women's organisations that support development and for enlarging women's capacity and influence in changing gender inequities
  • To sensitise women's organisations about ICT use and ownership
  • To work professionally on internal communication for organisations and networks
  • To give out information with a gender perspective to different media
The work includes the following components:
  1. Disseminating specialised information generated by the women's movement and experts on the matter
  2. Articulating urgent advocacies and positions in the women's movement to achieve Modemmujer's objectives
  3. Supporting internal communication in the different networks and organisations
  4. Working on the Sport informativo, bulletins, discussion lists, website
The evaluation process

The Modemmujer team decided to evaluate its work using the GEM tool, applying the four elements of this process. They held weekly meetings to study the documents, discuss main concepts and ideas and the framework by which they would conduct the evaluation. During this period, an evaluation plan was mapped out.

The team decided to evaluate three of Modemmujer's services:

  • Spot Informativo: a news and information bulletin, that includes documents, presentations, papers, calls to action and networking announcements. It is produced twice a week.
  • Elecciones Bulletin: a news and information bulletin on health and reproductive rights issues, with a special focus on abortion. It includes documents, papers, legislations, information on the abortion debate from different parts of the world, and information on women's organisations' positions on the issue. It is produced every two or three weeks.
  • Letter to Get New Subscribers: this letter is sent to encourage new subscribers. It is distributed according to need or when requested.

A visit by the regional coordinator for a two-day workshop with the team helped establish the main objectives and the concepts of evaluating with a gender perspective. The team was then able to set the specific gender objectives and the evaluation questions, indicators and methodologies they used for the evaluation. This first phase of the evaluation process took four months, from June to September 2002.

In October 2002, the team launched a survey among subscribers to evaluate Modemmujer's three services. They decided to encourage all subscribers to participate in the survey and sent invitations to all of them to answer the questionnaire that was put online on Modemmujer's web page. They also did in-depth interviews to key people in the women's movement, women's NGOs, academics and politicians in order to get to know more about the information and documentation services Modemmujer was giving. All this work took four months, from October 2002 to February 2003.

Analysing the results was another big task for the evaluation team. It took them almost five months to accomplish this, and two more months to write the report. When the results came, they were able to confirm that they had done a good job. Subscribers not only appreciated the information they had received for the past seven years, but also considered that they had been empowered by Modemmujer's information and communications work.

Setting Objectives

The team set the following evaluation objectives:
  1. To evaluate the work done so far and the tools that were used
  2. To identify if Modemmujer's work responded to the present needs of the women's movement
  3. To arrive at new ideas, create new proposals and come up with challenging perspectives for future work

Gender and ICT Issues

The evaluation sought to address the following gender and ICT issues:
  • ICT use supports and advances women's empowerment
  • ICT's strategic use fosters the advancement of women's rights

Formulating Evaluation Questions

The team wanted to know in what way and to which extent had Modemmujer's work influence its subscribers and encourage changes in their approach to gender issues and in their use of ICTs:

Did the information and communications services
  • contribute to subscribers' empowerment?
  • sensitise subscribers on gender issues?
  • empower subscribers for strategic ICT use?
    • Additional questions posed were:
    • Did the women's image built by Modemmujer's information services contribute to women's empowerment?
    • What were the elements in the information services that promoted empowerment?
    • What were the issues that the information services should build up in order to promote users´ empowerment?
    • Were the information services a tool that created awareness on the activities of the women's and feminist movement?
    • Were the information services seen as a link between women's and feminist organisations?
    • Did the information services contribute to change the unequal conditions of women?
    • Were the information services a tool built with a gender perspective?
    • Did the information services encourage better and more efficient use of ICTs?
    • Could we say that the information services were a positive example in using ICTs for strategic aims?
    • Did the information services create interest in using more ICT tools and in surfing the Internet?

    Setting Indicators

    The Gender and ICT Indicators used for the evaluation were:

    Empowerment of subscribers in the strategic use of ICTs

    • Number of subscribers according to sex
    • How many used the information that was sent using ICT tools
    • How many asked for documents offered in the information service using ICT tools
    • How many sent documents that were recommended by the information services using ICT tools
    • How many distributed the contents and documents to other constituencies using ICT tools?
    • How did the subscribers use the information services?
    • How did they share contents and documents? Why?
    • Did the information services help broaden the knowledge on gender and ICT issues. Did they encourage activities using ICT for campaigning, collecting signatures to support women's issues, organise events, demonstrations, etc.?
    • Did the information services help widen ICT knowledge and use with a gender perspective?

    Each service was evaluated by sending specific questionnaires of each kind of service to subscribers.

    1. Spot Informativo: a news and information bulletin, that includes documents, presentations, papers, calls to action and networking announcements. It is produced twice a week.
      General Objective:

      Identify how the Spot Informativo contributed to empowering Modemmujer subscribers

      Indicators for empowerment:
      • The Spot Informativo encouraged networking among women's organisations
      • The Spot Informativo promoted coordination between women's organisations in order to achieve greater presence, and to come up with and exert more influence on public policies
      • The Spot Informativo helped facilitate women's organisations to acquire more information/knowledge about gender issues
      • The Spot Informativo reinforced the capabilities of women and women's organisations in voicing out ideas and opinions on women's rights and the status of women
      Specific objective 1:

      Identify how the Spot Informativo has sensitised subscribers (both individuals and organisations) on gender issues

      Indicators for gender issues:
      • the Spot Informativo moved its subscribers to take up actions in changing gender inequalities in society
      • the Spot Informativo contributed to widen susbcribers´ knowledge and skills on gender issues
      • the Spot Informativo contributed to building the women's image it advocates
      Specific objective 2:

      Identify how the Spot Informativo has contributed to empowering subscribers by using ICTs

      Indicators:
      • How the Spot Informativo contributed to widen skills and knowledge of subscribers in using ICTs
      • The Spot Informativo helped subscribers to learn more about the developments in ICTs
      • Subscribers became interested in ICTs' strategic use and value
      General Indicators:
      • Number of spots sent regularly
      • Number of subscribers
      • Number of subscribers that read the spot
      • Number of subscribers that regularly used the information they receive
      • Number of documents sent; classified by subject
      • Percentage of male and female subscribers
      • Number of subscribers by country
      • Number of subscribers according to their activities
      • Number of new subscribers in the last six months
      • Percentage of requests according to different subjects/issues
    2. Elecciones Bulletin:a news and information bulletin on health and reproductive rights issues, with a special focus on abortion.
      General objective:

      To get to know the impact of the Eleccion electronic bulletin in the strategic planning of activities focusing on activities of subscribers with respect to giving information and intervention on policies; and the impact of these activities

      Evaluate if the Eleccion electronic bulletin incorporated a gender perspective in the selection, treatment and presentation of its information and articles on legal abortion and related issues

      Specific objective 1:

      To get to know if the Eleccion bulletin contributed to social change by facilitating information that helped women and women's organisations in the direction and plans of their activities on the abortion issue

      Indicator:
      • How the information sent helped women and women's organisations exert influence on policies in the national arena
      Specific objective 2:

      Identify if the information selected hued closely to or are in accord with the aims of Modemmujer's programme on women's rights for legal abortion

      Indicators:
      • That articles sent helped update and widen the knowledge about legal abortion
      • That the selection of information about legal abortion was guided by a gender perspective and took into account the issues that cut across legal abortion
      Specific objective 3:

      Determine which sections of the Elección electronic bulletin gave up-to-date and useful information on ICTs and maximisation of its use

      Indicator:
      • That the use of electronic tools in producing and disseminating the bulletin empowered women
      Specific objective 4:

      Determine how the electronic bulletin was used

      Indicator:
      • See if subscribers read and shared the information with other people and groups
      Specific objective 5:

      Evaluate users' perception on the clarity of information and design of the bulletin

      Indicators:
      • That the format and design were attractive and facilitated reading
      • That the sections in the bulletin were clearly distinctive
    3. Letter to Get New Subscribers: this letter is sent to encourage new subscribers.
      General objective:

      Identify if the invitation letter gave future subscribers an adequate idea of Modemmujer's work and philosophy; if it generated interest on Modemmujer's activities

      Specific objective 1:

      Identify if the people who received the invitation letter understood Modemmujer's activities and got them interested in the activities

      Indicators:
      • Number of people who visited the web page after receiving the invitation letter
      • Areas they found interesting
      Specific objective 2: Identify if future subscribers understood that Modemmujer works with a gender perspective
      Indicators:
      • Modemmujer's invitation letter generated interest on gender issues
      • Percentage of women and men who replied to the invitation letter and subscribed
      Specific objective 2: Identify if the invitation letter was an adequate instrument to get new subscribers
      Indicators:
      • Number of people who received the letter
      • Number of people who forwarded the letter to others
      • Number of positive answers
      • Number of people who did not subscribe

    Identifying Stakeholders/Evaluation Team

  • Modemmujer team
  • Subscribers
  • Members of the women’s and feminist movement Modemujer -electronic lists

    Collecting Quantitative Indicators

    Each service was evaluated by sending specific questionnaires of each kind of service to subscribers.



    1. Spot Informativo (information bulletin):
      sent the questionnaire to 1,300 subscribers who are mainly in the Latin American region
      The sections in this questionnaire were:
      • General questions about the respondents (sex, education, work, links to the women's movement, etc.)

      • Measuring empowerment: 4 questions
        These set of questions aimed to know if the Spot Informativo encouraged actions that favour the advancement of women's rights, helped articulate the women's movement, strengthened and widened political influence and networking.

      • Gender issues: 3 questions
        These set of questions aimed to see if the bulletin's contents helped break gender stereotypes, created a new image of women (as opinion leader and social actor, for instance), and encouraged activities that advocated to change women's situation in society.

      • ICTs: 17 questions
        These set of questions aimed to see if the bulletin encouraged women to use ICTs in their work and in their activism in the women's movement. It also asked about using ICT for sharing information, networking and articulating policies and positions in the women's movement.

      Received 241 answers (219 women, 21 men).

      • Almost half of the answers came from subscribers in Mexico.

      • Two hundred thirty-one respondents said that Modemmujer's work strengthens women's work and women's networks; 218 said they felt empowered by the information disseminated by Spot Informativo.

      • Seventy-two percent (72%) of the respondents said the bulletin gave inspiring information about women opinion leaders.

      • More than ninety percent (93.3%) said that the women's image Modemmujer gives were women who are social actors and decision- makers.

      • More than thirty percent (31.6%) acknowledged that the information received helped them to organise activities for women's rights.

      On Use of ICTs

      • One hundred thirty respondents said they started to use more ICTs in their daily work. The same number was encouraged to surf the Net and use Internet tools with a gender perspective.

      • Most of them used ICTs to share documents, search for more information on the web, and send contributions and inquires to network and articulate their positions and opinions with other women and organisations.

    2. Elecciones Bulletin:
      questionnaire was sent to its 50 subscribers in Mexico.
      The sections in this questionnaire are:
      • General questions about the respondent (sex, education, work, links to the women's movement, etc.)

      • Measuring empowerment: 6 questions
        These set of questions wanted to know if the Elecciones Bulletin gave out information that helped plan and guide the direction of activities and projects of its subsribers. It also asked if the information received widened subscribers' knowledge in terms of seeking out solutions to the highly sensitive issue of legal abortion in Mexico; how the information received helped them in public policies and in planning their activities strategically.

      • ICT use: 3 questions
        These set of questions wanted to know if the Eleccion Bulletin widened subscribers' knowledge on ICTs; if subscribers used ICTs with a gender perspective.

      • Design and presentation of information: 6 questions
        The presentation of the information and communications services is very important for Modemmujer. The letter should get readers interested in Modemmujer's services thus; the presentation should be attractive and easy to read. It also wanted graphic designs to be identified with the women's and feminist movement at the national and international levels.

      37 people answered the questionnaire

      • Ninety-two percent (92%) said the bulletin gave them a wide perspective on news, views and opinions about and around the abortion issue in Mexico.

      • Eighty-four percent (84%) said they could link this information to their political work, but only 57% said they had actually done so.

      • Ninety percent (90%) considered the bulletin brought up new concepts and ideas on how to deal with the issue, while 52% said the information helped them gain semantic or conceptual consensus for their political work.
      • In all, the bulletin kept activists informed and updated on the issue, but was not much of an influence in formulating policies.

      • To conclude, the bulletin empowered women in their work, kept them abreast of valuable information, but was negligible in terms of contributing much to their policy work.

      On ICT use

      • 63% affirmed that subscribers were motivated by the bulletin to make more use of ICTs in their daily work - networking and advocacy activities.

      • Fifty-seven percent (57%) shared the information they received with other people/organisations using ICT tools.

      • To conclude, the bulletin motivated users to use ICT with a gender perspective.
      With regards to the bulletin's design, 87% said the design was adequate and easy-reading.

    3. Letter to Get New Subscribers:
      sent to 450 people in the region
      The sections in this questionnaire are:
      • Measuring interest: 4 questions
        These set of questions aimed to see if the invitation letter stirred people's interest to subscribe to Modemmujer's information and communication services.

      • Measures if the letter sufficiently gave information on the type of work Modemmujer does: 3 questions
        These set of questions aimed to see if the letter reflected the type of information that Modemmujer works on; if the gender perspective was clearly shown

      • Measures if the letter made people interested enough to search for more information about Modemmujer; interesting enough to move people to invite others to subscribe: 5 questions
        These set of questions aimed to see if the letter encouraged recipients to surf the Net to get more information about Modemmujer and contact others to subscribe to Modemmujer's services

      35 people answered the questionnaire (31 women and 4 men)

      • Few people answered the questionnaire for this service compared to those who answered the other two services. At any rate, most of them said they became interested to know more about Modemmujer after reading the letter.

      • More than eighty-five percent (85.5%) said they sent the letter to at least one other person whom they encouraged to subscribe.

      • Eighty percent (80%) said they felt motivated to get to know more about gender issues, thanks to the letter. Most of them surfed Modemmujer's website after reading the letter.

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