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 center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
Economic empowerment is one of the priority areas of UN Women. UN Women Economic Empowerment Section works with Governments and multilateral partners to promote women’s economic empowerment and increase their access to economic opportunities, especially for those who are most excluded.
UN Women is developing a comprehensive and interactive knowledge management platform— the Knowledge Gateway — which seeks to respond to the demand for a multilingual and multidimensional platform on women’s economic empowerment. It will offer information solutions and networking opportunities for women and gender equality advocates to better share existing good practices and experience. It will also help position UN Women as the global knowledge broker on how to achieve women’s economic empowerment by increasing availability of cutting-edge research and up-to-date information, data and knowledge on women’s economic empowerment. The Gateway aims to increase women’s voice, participation and leadership in and contribution to the economy not only to influence policy but also to effect change in their own lives. A grant agreement has been signed with CIDA in the amount of approximately CDN$5 million for a four-year period.
Under the general supervision of the Chief of Economic Empowerment Section and under the direct supervision and guidance of the Knowledge Gateway Project Manager (P4), the Knowledge Management Specialist will be responsible to carry out a wide range of knowledge management and learning activities.
Duties and Responsibilities
Summary of Key Functions:
- Knowledge management and learning.
Description of Functions:
- Develop the Knowledge Gateway community, including setting the agenda of the project and promoting community collaboration around project priorities.
- Build and maintain good work relations with relevant institutions and individuals, especially the key stakeholders of the project from specific UN agencies, national government development assistance agencies and non government organisations.
- Implement governance structures of the project; responsible for arranging meetings and reporting on them and coordinating with the stakeholders.
- Build and coordinate the management of the of networks, including the different communities of practice and develop common guidance and capacity building tools for COP facilitators; encourage communication, capture knowledge and turn it into new knowledge resources.
- Address impediments to sharing information and the flow of knowledge, facilitate demand and supply of knowledge; develop a system for knowledge seeking and provision enshrined in accountability frameworks.
- Develop new online tools, surveys and other pilot projects, including those oriented toward collaboration and learning.
- Analyse research findings and good practices in programmes and projects on women’s economic empowerment, adapting the knowledge to the Knowledge Gateway’s needs so that the project can access cutting-edge research and up-to-date information, data and knowledge on ways to advance women’s economic empowerment and gender equality
- Manage the process of collecting and disseminating lessons learned on women's economic empowerment from the discussions generated in the Gateway.
- Build and maintain the relationship between the Knowledge Gateway project and the Knowledge Management Team of UN Women to enhance, update, and assist in the development of services and platform, including identifying new technologies and managing long-term development requests.
- As the Gateway project progresses, under the supervision of the project leader conduct on-going assessment of the project, adapt policies and innovate the project models to meet emerging needs of knowledge management and learning.
- Closely monitor the budget of the project, responsibility for reporting on budget outturns to the project manager and ensure a reasonable delivery rate.
Impact of Results:
- The key results have a major impact on the overall effectiveness of UN Women’s work on economic empowerment, leading to enhanced impact of the organisation on gender issues and the achievement of equality between women and men.
Competencies
Core values and Guiding principles:
- Integrity: Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
- Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
- Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity: Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.
Core Competencies:
Ethics and Values:
- Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity
Organizational Awareness:
- Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment
Development and Innovation:
- Take charge of self-development and take initiative
Work in teams:
- Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
Communicating and Information Sharing:
- Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication
Self-management and Emotional Intelligence:
- Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others
Conflict Management:
- Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.
Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing:
- Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge
Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:
- Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making
Functional Competencies:
- Ability to undertake policy research and prepare quantitative studies, utilizing statistical methodologies, knowledge of database applications for statistical analysis
- Good knowledge of gender issues and women’s economic empowerment issues
- Ability to organize and complete multiple tasks by establishing priorities
- Ability to handle a large volume of work possibly under time constraints
- Establishes, builds and sustains effective relationships with clients, demonstrating understanding of client’s perspective; anticipates client needs and addresses them promptly
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
- Master’s degree (or equivalent) in social sciences or related fields.
Experience:
- A minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience in the field of communication and electronic knowledge network
- Experience in working in a multicultural and web-based environment
- Have experience in project management
Language Requirements:
- Fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of another language (Arabic, French, Russian and/or Spanish) is 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.