Jobs - 27974- UN Women: Research and Data Specialist

UN Women: Research and Data Specialist

Location :

New York, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Type of Contract :

FTA International

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

22-Feb-12 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

P-4

Duration of Initial Contract :

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women (UNW) will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The Policy Division develops and implements the UN Women corporate programme of work on analysis, research and knowledge management that provides the evidence base for the advice and guidance UN Women provides to the intergovernmental process, the UN system, and to UN Women staff working at country and regional level on issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Division identifies emerging issues and trends, and develops and proposes new strategies for achieving the agreed goals through innovative approaches and lessons learned about what works in practice. It also designs and oversees the training and capacity development programs of UN Women, through the training facility in Santo Domingo.

Based on UN legislative mandates and UN Women Strategic Programme Plan, the Policy Division undertakes and/or coordinates global or sectoral research and data analysis; advises on norms, policies and strategies for achieving the internationally agreed goals related to gender equality and women’s empowerment issues. It acts as a knowledge hub, collecting evidence on progress and emerging issues, identifying trends in implementation of global commitments; and sharing knowledge on innovative approaches and lessons learned in implementation. It designs tools for inter-regional capabilities building and institutional development programmes and fosters strategic substantive partnerships with academia and other UN partners, in close collaboration with the Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnership Bureau, the Programme Division and UN Women Training Center (Santo Domingo).

To successfully perform its mission/mandate, the Policy Division is organized into Sections, bringing together technical experts who undertake issues-based research; analyze data on country, regional or global trends; build a knowledge base on policy commitments and their implementation; propose evidence-based options for global policy, norms and standards and for UN Women global programme strategies; and contribute substantive inputs to policy advocacy and technical cooperation programmes.

The Research and Data Section in the Policy Division is responsible for leading UN Women’s research and data agenda and for positioning UN Women as a global knowledge broker on gender equality and women’s empowerment. It produces knowledge products including UN Women flagship publications such as Progress of the World’s Women and The Survey of the Role of Women in Development, and includes UN Women’s knowledge management team. , and includes UN Women’s knowledge management team.

The Research and Data Specialist is responsible for implementing key elements of UN Women’s Research and Data strategy, in particular in relation to developing and maintaining strategic research and data partnerships, including on improving the quality, accessibility and use of data and statistics on gender equality both within UN Women, across the UN system and beyond.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of key functions:

Support for the development and implementation of UN Women’s new research and data strategy, with a particular focus on the research and evidence components:

Provide support to the Chief of Research and Data in developing the new strategy, including for example, consulting with key stakeholders within and outside of UN Women, mapping existing work on gender research and data etc.
Actively lead a UN-Women wide community of practice on research and data, as one part of efforts to strengthen and coordinate the organization’s capacity in this area.

Developing and maintaining strategic research and data partnerships, including with other UN agencies, regional commissions, global development research institutes, leading global thinkers on development, among others:

Consult on and identify major gaps in research and data, spurring research institutions to take up the agenda and to contribute to filling identified gaps.
Identify strategic opportunities to strengthen the availability and quality of gender statistics, and develop and manage the partnerships needed to deliver them, including for example with the UN Statistics Division, regional commissions, OECD and others.
Convene groups of key thinkers on gender to input, advise and steer UN Women’s research and data agenda.
Represent UN Women in inter-agency working groups and fora on research and data, including for example the inter-agency working group on statistics and the inter-agency expert group on MDG indicators.

Managing research, and data and policy analysis, in collaboration with Policy Division thematic sections and the Knowledge Management team, on key areas for gender equality and women’s empowerment, including emerging and cross-cutting issues:

Identify and carry out pieces of research, data and policy analysis, to help position UN Women as a key broker of knowledge on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Keep abreast of emerging development issues to galvanize UN Women’s analytical capacity to respond.
Commission and manage research on key cross-cutting issues and in order to help UN Women to forecast and respond to emerging research issues.
Contribute to the development and implementation of peer review and quality assurance mechanisms for UN Women’s policy knowledge products.
Work creatively and flexibly across UN Women, to identify synergies and linkages in relation to research and data.

Advising UN Women thematic sections on issues related to research and evidence:

Contribute to internal reviews of UN Women policies and programmes to ensure good use of evidence.
Work with policy teams to build a high quality evidence base for their work, including action-oriented research to link academic and policy research with knowledge generated from practice at country level.
Provide advice and expertise to Policy Division colleagues on the existence, availability and applicability of sources of evidence and research on thematic issues related to gender equality.
Produce internal guidance notes and briefings on the latest gender research for colleagues across the organization.

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles:

Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Core Competencies:

Ethics and Values: Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents
Organizational Awareness: Building support and political acumen.
Planning and organizing: Proven ability to plan strategic direction and ability to organize and service intergovernmental bodies and international technical meetings
Developing and Empowering People / coaching and mentoring: Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation
Working in Teams: Proven record of building and managing teams and creating an enabling and collaborative work environment, including the ability to effectively lead, supervise, mentor, develop and evaluate staff.
Communicating Information and Ideas: Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication
Self-management and Emotional intelligence: Creating an emotionally intelligent organization
Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements: Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards. Ability to interact and negotiate with high-level government officials are required
Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning: Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.
Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Fair and transparent decision-making; calculated risk-taking
Commitment to continuous learning: Willingness to keep abreast of new developments in the field of gender equality thematic areas Leadership - Proven track record of excellent management and technical leadership skills and ability to delegate appropriate responsibility, accountability and decision-making authority.

Functional Competencies:

In-depth understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods, particularly in relation to gender.
A substantial background in gender research.
Ability to develop and maintain partnerships with government counterparts, UN agencies, donors, and NGO partners.
Proven excellent written and oral communication skills
Proven analytical and problem solving skills
Ability to leverage information technology, executive information systems, management techniques and tools for optimal office performance.
Excellent strategic planning, goal-setting and prioritization skills.
Effectiveness in establishing and fostering good relations with Strong, proven commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Masters (or equivalent) in a relevant social science discipline, with a substantial gender component.

Experience:

A minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible work experience carrying out research and analysis in a development policy and/or research context.
Significant record of data analysis, research and writing, including on gender and development.

Language Requirements:

Fluency in written and oral in English is required. Knowledge of another UN working language is very desirable.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.