Paper short abstract:

The chapter will draw on the experience of Dawlaty and its partners during the COVID-19 in developing a set of indicators to effectively report on women organizing and political participation during conflict using nontraditional methods.

Paper long abstract:

While the Women, Peace and Security has developed indicators to measure women participation, these indicators are only viable to measure a rather narrow and specific perspective of justice for women. For many Syrian grass-root groups working in a challenging environment, they tend to follow more complex ways to ensure participation and deliver change which make presenting their impact a complex task. As a result, their ability to reflect the actual progress they achieve on the ground, and in turn solicit support, funding, and ensure the sustainability of their operations is limited.

The proposed chapter will focus on the methodology used by Dawlaty and its partners in developing a set of indicators which can be used by grass-root groups to effectively report on their work on women organizing and political participation in conflict-affected countries using nontraditional methods.

The chapter will draw on our experience and that of our partners during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting on what it means to work on the field and virtually in a conflict setting. Drawing on literature on feminist evaluation and participatory methods to measure impact, indicators and focus areas will be derived from the discussions and filtered out to produce a drafting of the indicators. These indicators are later shared with experts and partners organizations for face value validation.

The list of indicators will reflect our development and face value validation of the proposed indicators. Furthermore, it will guide future work on operationalizing them in the field to test it for usability and further validation.