Background

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) is dedicated to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN-Women with its enhanced role at the country, regional and global levels.

UN Women’s multi-donor Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) was launched in 2009 to fast-track commitments to gender equality focused on women’s economic and political empowerment at local, national and regional levels. The Fund provides multi-year grants ranging from US $200,000 – US $1 million directly to women’s organizations and governmental agencies in developing countries; it is dedicated to advancing the economic and political empowerment of women around the world. With generous support from the Governments of Spain, Norway, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, current grants have reached 9.4 million beneficiaries, including by equipping women with leadership and financial skills, and by helping them secure decent jobs and social protection benefits.

The Fund provides grants on a competitive basis directly to civil society organizations to transform legal commitments into tangible actions that have a positive impact on the lives of women and girls around the world. Its mandate seeks to further the Beijing Platform for Action, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and regional agreements such as the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Belen do Para, among others.

Across these grants, the Fund advances two major inter-related programme priority areas:

• Programmes focused on women’s political empowerment aim to increase women’s political participation and good governance to ensure that decision-making processes are participatory, responsive, equitable and inclusive, increasing women’s leadership and influence over decision-making in all spheres of life, and transforming gender equality policies into concrete systems for implementation to advance gender justice;
• Grants awarded for women’s economic empowerment seek to substantially increase women’s access to and control over economic decision-making, land, labor, livelihoods and other means of production and social protections, especially for women in situations of marginalization.

Since its launch in 2009, the Fund has delivered grants totaling US $56.5 million to 96 grantee programmes in 72 countries. Awarded programmes reflect a range of interventions in commitments to gender equality laws and policies and embody unique combinations of strategies, partnerships and target beneficiaries.

FGE was established as a bold investment in women’s rights, testing a more focused and better-resourced modality for catalyzing and sustaining gender equality and efforts. Its Programme Document sets forth its mandate to track, assess, and widely share the lessons learned from this pioneering grant programme and to contribute to global know-how in the field of gender equality.

Undertaking strategic evaluations of programmes are a vital piece of FGE’s mandate. The Fund follows a decentralized evaluation approach, by which grantee organizations are responsible to manage (or co-manage) independent evaluations of their programmes, following the guidance and oversight (and in some cases co-management) by FGE’s Regional Monitoring and Reporting Specialist and UN Women field offices. Grantee organizations are expected to follow UN Women/UNEG evaluation guidance provided.

As such, since the Fund’s inception, more than 32 evaluations have been undertaken across the globe, including Mid-Term Evaluations (MTE) and Final Evaluations (FE), and 14 more are currently underway.

The wealth of information captured through these 32 evaluation processes have provided knowledge both on substance of FGE’s supported work on namely political and economic empowerment of women, as well as on the Funds monitoring and evaluation functions and processes. In order to better capture this wealth of information and to use it in a way that it contributes to the Fund and its stakeholders learning process, FGE will undertake a Meta-Evaluation and Analysis of selected reports. The current consultancy will cover MTE and FE Reports that have been finalized by June 1st 2015, however, in the case of programmes that have finalized both a MTE and a FE (7 cases), only the FE report will be part of this exercise; in total 25 reports will be included in this exercise. For ease of reference from here onwards, the reports that will be part of this evaluation will be stated as Evaluation Reports (ER).

Duties and Responsibilities

The selected consultant will work in two phases:

First Preliminary Phase – Meta-Evaluation:

• review the FGE evaluation reports produced to assess them against a tailored set of GERAAS standards and produce a brief report on the quality and ratings of the reports evaluated;
  Second more Substantive Phase –Meta-Analysis: the consultant will review the reports that have been rated “satisfactory and above”, and produce a meta-analysis report by synthesizing key findings, recommendations, conclusions, and lessons learned; This is required to develop constructive lessons for future systemic strengthening of programming, organizational effectiveness and the evaluation function.

Whereas the Meta-Evaluation provides a rating of the quality of evaluation reports according to UN Women standards; the Meta-Analysis synthesizes the key findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the body of final evaluation reports that meet UN Women quality requirements.

Phase 1 – Meta-Evaluation - ME:

Review the 25 evaluation reports produced from 2009 until 1 June 2015 that will be part of this exercise and undertake a meta-evaluation of these.

The purpose of the ME is to capture the quality of evaluation reports. This is required to develop constructive lessons for future systemic strengthening of evaluation, and to allow possible trend analysis to examine changes in the quality and credibility of evaluations managed by FGE’s grantees. This phase is mainly designed to strengthen FGE’s evaluation capacity by providing practical recommendations to improve future grantee evaluations.

This will be done, as possible/feasible based on UNW/GERAAS and UNEG standards. Please note that the Evaluation Management Team will work with the consultant once selected, to ensure the applicability of the existing tools to ensure these are tailored to this assignment, for which this preliminary phase of quality verification of reports, is to be done in a coherent but rapid way as the main goal of FGE is linked to the Meta-Analysis of findings (see below).  For example, out of the 8 parameters used in a detailed GERAAS process, potentially the four parameters “methodology, findings, conclusions and recommendations” which are the “yardstick of a good quality report” (UNW GERAAS guidance page 7) could be the ones assessed.

Phase 2 – Meta-Analysis - MA

Evaluation Reports that are found to be “satisfactory or above” (using GERAAS), will be selected to take part in the Meta-Analysis. The MA aggregates the recurrent findings, conclusions, lessons learned, good practices and recommendations that have come out of FGE evaluations. The Meta-Analysis is poised to provide a basis to better understand UN Women FGE programme interventions around the UNEG criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and impact). It also provides further analysis on the progress made against FGE’s goals and priorities (and strategies) in the two areas of women’s economic and political empowerment.

This could include, for example, answering questions like: What are the strengths that emerge from the evaluations of FGE regarding political and economic empowerment? Which types of efforts/strategies being implemented have shown high degrees of relevance, effectiveness, sustainability, efficiency and impact and what factors have contributed to this or inhibited success?  Are there any patterns and lessons to be learnt regarding results produced by FGE programmes in general? Are there findings and conclusions that point in the same direction? What strengths and challenges do the evaluations expose with regard to FGE’s effort to (1) Women’s political empowerment and (2) women’s economic empowerment?  To be explored and discussed further during Inception Phase and after Meta-Evaluation Phase.

The Meta-Analysis will be an important knowledge piece for FGE that has been implementing over 96 programmes on economic and political empowerment for more than 5 years now. The MA helps to paint a global perspective of UN Women FGE interventions at different levels and facilitate better understanding and insight on what works to advance gender equality and women empowerment.

The synthesis of this information will support the use of evaluation findings by UN Women and FGE as well as its grantees. It will also inform donors and other development partners about the effectiveness of the interventions supported by the FGE in its 6 years of existence. Usability will be ensured through different strategies, including tailoring of the deliverables to ensure that the results of the ME and MA are captured in a way that stimulates sharing and understanding of knowledge. Note that 4 stand-alone knowledge pieces (2 pagers of trends per region or strategies per theme for example) will be part of this MA Report.

Important Submission Information

All interested candidates are required to the following package to caroline.horekens@unwomen.org, no later than 15 June.

Proposal:

Please submit a proposal of 5 pages maximum, which must include the following items:

• Summary of consultant experience and background;
• Brief summary of the proposed methodology for the ME/MA including the involvement of the Reference Group and other stakeholders during each step;
• Work plan – including timelines and deliverables and if applicable – team structure roles and responsibilities.
• Budget;
• List of the most relevant previous consulting projects completed, including a description of the projects and contact details for references.

CVs:

• CV for consultant, and other team members if applicable.

­Sample Reports:

• At least three sample reports from previous consulting projects (all samples will be kept confidential) or links to website where reports can be retrieved (highly recommended).

For a complete overview, please review the complete Terms of Reference, which includes a more detailed description of Deliverables, Work Plan, and Proposal Submission information, available at the following Link.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s Values and ethical standards;
• Plans, prioritizes, and delivers quality products according to schedule;
• Participates effectively in a team-based, information-sharing environment, collaborates and cooperates with others;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

• Focuses on impact and results and responds positively to feedback;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors, at the senior levels;
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines;
• Proven track record in undertaking complex and comprehensive field assessments, including national consultations;
• Proven ability to coordination with a team of international organizations and senior national stakeholders;
• High level of communication (verbal and written) and interpersonal skills and working effectively within a multi-cultural environment;
• Excellent report writing skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Masters or higher level degree in International Development or a similar field related to political and economic development, monitoring and evaluation, etc.

Experience:

• A minimum of 7 years relevant experience undertaking evaluations is required including proven practical professional experience in designing and conducting major evaluations;
• Substantive experience in evaluating similar development projects related to local development and political and economic empowerment of women;
• Substantive experience in evaluating projects and programmes with a strong gender focus is preferred;
• Excellent and proven knowledge of evaluation methodologies and approaches;
• Experience with meta-evaluation and meta-analysis of evaluation reports, preferably with UN agencies, is an asset;
• Proven experience in producing coherent, clear analytic reports and knowledge pieces is a requirement.

Language:

• Excellent English writing and communication and analytical skills are required;
• Working knowledge of Spanish is necessary – as several reports will be in Spanish.