UN WOMEN Jobs - 59416- National Consultant to Conduct the Participatory G

National Consultant to Conduct the Participatory Gender Audit - 3 Positions

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Tbilisi, GEORGIA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

21-Sep-2015

Application Deadline :

14-Sep-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

39 working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

39 working days in the period of 21 September, 2015 –15 December, 2015

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

Georgia joined CEDAW without reservations in 1994 and Georgian delegation took part in the elaboration of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995. The principles of equality, regardless of one’s sex, are embedded in Georgia’s Constitution of 1995 (Constitution of Georgia, article 14, states: “Everyone is born free and is equal before the law, regardless of race, skin color, language, sex, religion, political and other beliefs, national, ethnic and social origin, property and title of nobility or place of residence") and all the other major legislative acts. Since the mid-1990s government of Georgia has adopted a number of policies and laws aimed at enhancement of gender equality and combating of violence against women and girls. Some of the most recent policies and laws are: State Concept on Gender Equality (2006), legislation on domestic violence and trafficking in human beings (2006), Gender Equality Law (2010), National Gender Equality Action Plan 2011-2013, biannual Action Plans on domestic violence and trafficking in human beings’ (2011-2012), and National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (2012-2015).

UN Women (previously UNIFEM) has been providing technical assistance to the government and civil society partners towards achievement of greater gender equality and women’s empowerment in Georgia since 2001. Throughout these years of collaboration, UN Women established good working relations with partners in the government and NGO community. The areas of collaboration have primarily been issues related to women, peace, and security agenda, combating of violence against women, and support to women’s economic empowerment. UN Women has had a holistic approach to work, which entailed work on the level of policies, and legislation, institutional capacity development and support, and grassroots’ mobilization and awareness raising. The work has been encompassing both duty-bearers and rights-holders to ensure that the former understand their duties and responsibilities in the field of gender equality and women’s rights and are accountable to the latter, while the latter know more about their rights and responsibilities and demand and engage in the development of better policies, services, etc.

In order to further strengthen technical support towards gender mainstreaming at all the three levels of work and towards meeting Georgia’s internationally and nationally undertaken commitments in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment, UN Women in collaboration with International Labour Organization (ILO) introduced a methodology of Participatory Gender Audit (PGA) to Georgia in November 2012. The PGA methodology has been elaborated by ILO in the beginning of the 2000s (The training manual on Participatory Gender Audit was adapted by ILO was first developed by Gender and Development Training Centre for the Stichting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers in the Netherlands in the early 2000s). According to the ILO definition:

“…the ILO Participatory Gender Audit is a tool that supports an organization’s commitment to gender equality by examining the extent to which equality is being institutionalized; helping to identify good practices in technical work; and pointing to effective and efficient ways of moving forward in mainstreaming gender in all work activities." ( ILO, A Manual for Gender Audit Facilitators: The ILO Participatory Gender Audit Methodology, ILO, 2007, 5.).

Thus, the ILO PGA methodology was shared with partners in Georgia through a training of Facilitators of Participatory Gender Audit, establishing a pool of national experts from civil society and government with relevant skills and capacities. This pool consists of some 27 trained and certified Gender Audit Facilitators on the one hand from some of the major government institutions that are relevant from the viewpoint of implementation of gender equality laws and policies and on the other hand, among women’s rights and gender equality advocates. The rationale behind this twofold approach once selecting the participants of the training was the intention to strengthen internal capacity of to be audited institutions as well as among those external actors who can advocate for such audits to be conducted in relevant government institutions.

Given the above, PGA methodology is a tool, which if fully applied can in a complexity benefit not only those organizations that will undergo such audits, but also beneficiaries of these organizations. To further this work, UN Women undertook four PGAs - of the Parliament of Georgia and the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees (MIDPOTAR) in 2013 and of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Defense in 2014. The audit reports have been finalized and shared with relevant decision-makers in these structures and the work has been underway to implement the audit findings and recommendations. Inspired by the positive example of these two audits, two more state structures – the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure and Tbilisi City Municipality expressed goodwill to undergo participatory gender audit in 2015.

In both of these entities the PGA will look whether internal practices and procedures and related support systems for gender mainstreaming are in place and effective and reinforce each other; it will monitor and assess the relative progress made in gender mainstreaming; will identify the critical gaps and challenges, in terms of effective gender responsive services and policies and recommend ways for addressing them; and last but not least, document good practices towards the achievement of gender equality.

PGA will be conducted by a team of three national facilitators (PGA Team) following the ILO PGA methodology (that recommends having at least three members in the PGA Team). The national consultants will be selected from the pool of certified PGA facilitators trained by UN Women/ILO in November 2012, in Tbilisi, Georgia. The PGA Team will benefit from guidance and support of UN Women Country Office – namely, UN Women Georgia National Programme Officer and UN Women Georgia Country Representative.

To implement the work spelled out in the description section above, in the frameworks of this ToR, UN Women intends to hire three national consultants / facilitators to conduct the participatory gender audit of the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure and Tbilisi City Municipality (Mayer’s Office and its administrative organs – excluding City Hall - Sakrebulo) in the period from 21 September to 15 December 2015. As per the key principles of ILO PGA approach three national consultants will be selected from the pool of already trained and certified group of Facilitators of Participatory Gender Audit available in Georgia. Therefore, the Terms of Reference for selection of the participants will be shared by email with this pool of national consultants / facilitators.

Duties and Responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities of each of the three national consultants are:

Elaborate and submit the work plan and specific methodology on PGA for each of the two entities including key activities, and timeframe of the assignment in close cooperation with the UN Women team;
Conduct gender audit of the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure and Tbilisi City Municipality (Mayer’s Office and its administrative organs) in line with the finalized and agreed methodology according to the ILO manual and procedures on Participatory Gender Audit (2007). Namely, implement similar activities in both audited entities to ensure that both institutions undergo full-fledged PGA;
Conduct initial desk review of documents prior to audit meetings;
Coordinate and conduct meetings and individual interviews with the audit focal persons and key staff of both entities;
Conduct at least 30 individual interviews with the staff of both entities – at least 15 individual interviews in each;
Conduct and facilitate two participatory final PGA workshops and discuss findings from interviews and desk review – one in each entity (costs for the workshops will be covered by UN Women separately);
Draft two PGA reports (one for each audited entity) including process, findings of the study and final recommendations in Georgian (executive summaries to be translated in English by UN Women);
Conduct two presentations of the findings of the PGAs with the relevant recommendations – one for each audited entity;
Finalize, write up and submit the final reports in Georgian with the relevant recommendations to the entities.

Deliverables:

Developed work plan and specific methodology on PGAs of the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure and Tbilisi city municipality, including key activities, and timeframe of the assignment (4 working days) – by 30 September, 2015;
Desk review report of all the relevant documents of the two audited entities completed (8 working days) - by 16 October, 2015;
Conducted at least 30 individual interviews and meetings for gender audit with key staff in both structures (at least 15 interviews in each structure) and the key findings of the interviews communicated with UN Women in writing (10 working days) – by 30 October, 2015;
Two two-day PGA workshops with the staff of each of the two entities conducted (7 working days) – by 13 November, 2015;
Two presentations on the preliminary findings of the PGAs delivered (2 working days) – by 30 November, 2015;
Two final PGA reports prepared in Georgian and submitted to UN Women (8 working days) – by 15 December, 2015.

Competencies

Core Competencies:

Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional Competencies:

Excellent writing, presentation/public speaking skills;
IT literacy.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

University degree (Masters) in Social Sciences or Humanities;
Certificate of completion of ILO/UN Women training for PGA Facilitators.

Experience:

At least three years of relevant professional experience in the field of gender equality and women’s rights;
Good understanding and proved knowledge of gender mainstreaming principles;
Solid knowledge and understanding of conducting participatory gender audit its scope and key principles;
Sound understanding of local context as demonstrated in the proposed audit methodology and proposed stages of the PGA;
Good writing skills with demonstrated ability to plan and undertake participatory gender audit, collect and analyze data;
Past experience of work in an international environment.

Language:

Fluency in Georgian and good knowledge of English.

Evaluation procedure:

The candidates will be evaluated against the following technical and financial criteria:

University degree (Masters) in Social Sciences or Humanities (max 30 points);
Certificate of completion of ILO/UN Women training for PGA Facilitators (max 20 points);
Three years of relevant professional experience in the field of gender equality and women’s rights (max 40 points);
Fluency in Georgian and good knowledge of English (max 30 points);
Good understanding and proved knowledge of gender mainstreaming principles (max 60 points);
Solid knowledge and understanding of conducting participatory gender audit its scope and key principles (max 60 points);
Sound understanding of local context as demonstrated in the proposed audit methodology and proposed stages of the PGA (max 60 points);
Good writing skills with demonstrated ability to plan and undertake participatory gender audit, collect and analyze data (max 50 points).

Maximum total technical score amounts to 350 points. Only candidates who have passed over the minimum qualification criteria and have accumulated at least 245 points out of maximum 350 under technical evaluation will qualify for the next stage i.e. evaluation of their financial proposals.

Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 150

S – score received on financial evaluation.

Fmin – the lowest financial offer out of all the submitted offers qualified over the technical evaluation round;

F – financial offer under consideration.

The winning candidate will be the candidate, who has accumulated the highest aggregated score (technical

scoring + financial scoring).

Management arrangements:

The National Consultant will work under the overall guidance of the UN Women Country Representative in Georgia and direct supervision of UN Women National Programme Officer

Financial arrangements:

Payment will be disbursed upon submission and approval of deliverables and certification by UN Women National Programme Officer that the services have been satisfactorily performed as specified below:

Deliverable 1 and 2 (12 working days) – 25%;
Deliverables 3 and 4 (17 working days) – 45%;
Deliverables 5 and 6 (10 working days) – 30%.

In total each of the three consultants/facilitators will work for 39 working days during the period of 21 September, 2015 – 15 December, 2015.

Application procedure:

CV and dully filled P11 form that can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment
Technical proposal on gender audit methodology explaining why candidate considers her/himself the most suitable for the work and providing a brief methodology concept-vision on how she/he will approach and conduct the work;
Financial proposal - lump sum budget in Georgian Lari (including breakdown of this lump sum amount indicating all related costs to complete the mission: total remuneration, travel expenses (per diems, tickets, lodging and terminal expenses, if applicable).

Only short listed candidates will be contacted.

Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.