UN Women, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women has been created to accelerate up the process of meeting the needs of women and girls across the world. As a part of the UN reform agenda, it brings together resources and mandates which will subsequently have a lasting impact on the whole community. Gender inequality contributes to the spread of HIV and increases infection rates and reduces the ability of women and girls to cope with the epidemic. Often, women and girls have less information about HIV and fewer resources to take preventive measures. They face barriers to the negotiation of safer sex, because of unequal power dynamics with men. Sexual violence, a widespread violation of women’s rights, exacerbates the risk of HIV transmission. Evidence suggests that forced and arranged marriages can be a major risk factor, especially for young women and girls. Many women livings with HIV struggle with stigma and exclusion, aggravated by their lack of rights. Women widowed by AIDS or living with HIV may face property disputes with in-laws, complicated by limited access to justice to uphold their rights.

Promoting women’s leadership and decision-making is a core component of UN Women’s efforts across its thematic areas: promoting women’s economic empowerment, addressing violence against women and girls, advancing the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda, and ensuring legal and policy commitments on gender equality are implemented and monitored. Transformative leadership has been recognized as a vital key to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Despite to the significant progress in advancing leadership and advocacy skills by women living with HIV in Tajikistan, they continue to face discrimination and violence from the home, in the streets and in workplaces. In this respect, UN Women Programme office in Tajikistan plans to conduct a two days training on “Transformative Leadership for gender equality and non-discrimination in HIV” focused on transformative leadership in HIV programming; understanding the HIV challenge for effective women’s leadership response; institutional management; effective communication and its importance in transformative leadership, networking partnerships and advocacy, mentorship; and action planning and personal experience sharing of women living with HIV.

The training seeks to strengthen leaders’ use of gender-inclusive and transformative leadership principles and practices to address gender biases and promote commitments to gender equality and women’s rights.  

For this purpose, UN Women is seeking for a National Consultant to support in facilitation of the training on “Transformative Leadership for gender equality” for women living with HIV and document UN Women support to transformative leadership of women living with HIV.

Under an overall supervision of the UN Women Country Programme Manager and support of National Program Coordinator, the Consultant will perform, the following tasks:

1. National consultant will be responsible to review the developed module on transformative leadership for gender equality and other materials developed by UN Women. This should draw on international best practice in transformative leadership for promoting gender equality and to develop an in-depth understanding of the gendered nuances of women and HIV.
2. To update and submit the training methodology designed based on the developed by UN Women materials on transformative leadership for gender equality, which will include training outline, a comprehensive training module, including agenda, supporting material, case studies with the specific focus on women living with HIV.
3. To facilitate training sessions on “Transformative Leadership for gender equality” as presented above with focus on the following aspects but not limited to: induction into various leadership models, gender equality fundamentals and promoting gender equality, gender identity, role and values, gender stereotypes and bias, how to be informed and sensitive towards gender issues, transformational change and how to integrate gender aspects into the activities at the local level. National consultant should provide participants all required guidance on available resources in this field.
4. To build competence and understanding in advocacy actions for promotion, protection, and fulfilment of rights of women living with HIV in various international, national, and regional policy and programming.
5. To develop and analyze of intake knowledge assessment questionnaires and post training feed-back questionnaires and key recommendations for future similar assignments.
6. To document UN Women support to transformative leadership based on the analysis of the work done in the areas of building the transformational leadership skills, especially for women living with HIV.  
7. To prepare and submit the final report, which will reflect the overall description of implemented assignment, including major achievements, changes of participants’ perceptions based on analyzed questionnaires, main challenges and constraints, recommendations for future gender capacity development support to women living with HIV.

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Good knowledge of the training topic on medical aspects and ethical norms in the field of HIV counselling.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:  https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional Competencies:

• Possesses the ability to work independently, under pressure and meet deadlines;
• Good knowledge of technical area;
• Good organizational skills and ability to pay close attention to detail;
• Experience in report writing.
• Proven excellent communication and facilitation skills;

Qualifications:

Education:         

• University degree in medicine, gender equality, women’s studies, law, human rights, social studies, development studies or related field;

Experience:

• At least 5 years of relevant experience in transformative leadership for gender equality
• Experience in promoting the rights of women living with HIV (WLWH)H to overcome stigma and discrimination and the empowerment of WLWH considered an asset;
• At least three years of proven track record of delivery trainings and capacity building programs for women, on topics as gender equality, leadership, and other related areas;
• Previous work and direct working relationships with UN agencies considered an asset.

Knowledge of languages:

• Fluency in Russian and Tajik language.