This book helps gender and development practitioners to understand how to square the circle and manage pressure to report on results, while drawing on women s own perceptions of their lives and gender power relations to highlight areas where economic empowerment cannot deliver the changes needed. Development organizations of all kinds should be looking for the best value for money, using analysis to understand the complex scope of the change needed and allocate their scarce resources (time, attention and money) to genuinely support women living in poverty.
MEL can be used to help guide practitioners in taking decisions responsibly and well, by holding their own organizations to account, and contributing to knowledge which will provide a foundation for better work in future.