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 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.

Care work is fundamental for human wellbeing as well as essential for a vibrant, sustainable economy with a productive labour force. The centrality of care to sustainable development and its relevance for gender equality are now widely recognized by the global community including as a target under Sustainable Development Goal 5. 1 Care work ensures the complex and life-sustaining web on which our very existence depends; without it, individuals, families, societies and economies would not be able to survive and thrive. Yet, around the world women and girls shoulder a disproportionate share of care work that is unpaid, unrecognized and undervalued. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, women already did three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men with women on average doing around 4.1 hours per day compared to men who on average do around 1.7 hours. For women living in rural areas these figures can vary widely, particularly in areas with limited access to regular basic services such as energy, water and sanitation, as women and girls tend to bear the brunt of the unpaid labour to collect and manage these resources and services for daily household consumption.

Furthermore, illness or other crises in the household can increase the time spent by women and girls on care giving and domestic work. This has been brought into sharp focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the care demands on women and girls due to pandemic-related measures and lockdowns. As evidenced from previous epidemics, women and girls tend to be the ones who take on the bulk of the extra care needed when national systems are unable to cope. Addressing unpaid care work is particularly relevant in West, Central and Southern African contexts where access to decent work is limited and women’s employment options are significantly constrained by societal expectations that burden them with disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work.

The 3R Programme will build on UN Women’s expertise at the global, regional and country level as well as UN Women’s existing strong partnerships with women’s cooperatives and other women’s rights organizations, traditional leaders, communities, men and boys, and the private and public sectors. The Programme seeks to address unequal power relations, systemic discrimination and harmful norms and practices that underpin inequities in care work. In particular, the 3R Programme will complement existing UN Women programmes on climate[1]resilient agriculture and rural women’s economic empowerment in the three countries, by developing a care component which responds to lessons learned that indicate insufficient attention is given to women’s unpaid care and domestic workloads and overall time poverty. This Programme fills a critical gap in this area by developing a holistic package of solutions, i.e. transformative solutions, to these challenges.

Care work is a crucial element for human well-being as well as an essential component for a vibrant, sustainable economy with a productive labour force. Care work ensures the complex and life-sustaining web on which our very existence depends on. Women around the globe take on a disproportionate share of unpaid care work, and gender imbalances in the distribution of care work constitute a root cause of women’s economic and social disempowerment. In South Africa, Budlender (2008, p.16) finds that women spend almost ten times as much time on care as men (48 minutes compared with five minutes per day), Further, this gender difference may manifest at young ages. In South Africa, for example, Budlender (2008, p.30) finds that “[young] girls were three times as likely to do unpaid care work as young boys”. For women living in rural areas these figures can vary widely, particularly in areas with limited access to regular basic services such as energy, water and sanitation, as women and girls tend to withstand the worst of the unpaid labour to collect and manage these resources and services for daily household consumption.

UN Women developed the ‘Transforming Approaches to Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute unpaid Care Work in Women’s Economic Empowerment Programming’ Programme, dubbed the 3R Programme, being implemented in Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa. The overarching goal of the Programme is to remove the structural barriers to women’s full and equal participation in the economy by recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work. Although the Programme was initially developed to focus on the 3Rs, UN Women equally realizes the importance of rewarding and representing1 paid care workers by ensuring decent work and social protection, including migrant workers.

• Governments should ensure that core economic and social policies include concrete commitments to establish, finance and sustain universal care systems and invest in affordable, accessible, quality care services (health care, education, childcare, elder care, disability care) infrastructure (sustainable energy, water, and transport and information and communications technologies) for all. Governments and international financial institutions (IFIs) must ensure that fiscal consolidation and austerity measures in response to social and economic crises do not restrict investment in and the quality of public care systems. We must also guard against privatization of public care services, which disproportionately harms women and girls, who are most likely to fill the gap in care services through their unpaid care work and are least able to pay out-of-pocket for privatized care services.
• The private sector has an important role to play in the care economy, for example, by providing decent care jobs, enacting care policies that further gender equality, such as paid maternity, paternity, and parental leave, and investing in care services and infrastructure in companies. The private sector should align with the public sector in applying and enforcing care-related laws, regulations, and policies, especially labour standards, to further the 3R framework.
• Improve data and statistics on care. A key priority is to strengthen the production, dissemination, and use of data and statistics on care work, both paid and unpaid, and on care-related policies and investments. Improved measurement of the amount, kind, and distribution of unpaid care work between men and women within families and communities (through time-use surveys and other instruments) and of paid care work, decent work deficits, and occupational segregation will help shape better and more gender-responsive care policies and systems. Incorporating measures of paid and unpaid care work in national and international statistics and in measures of economic progress is crucial for recognizing the value of care and its contributions.

Although pre-primary education is a policy priority in South Africa and has been for a few decades, sufficient provision of affordable and high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is still inadequate, even for children from age 3 to the age they enter primary school. This is reflected in public spending on pre-primary education, which is a tiny fraction of gross domestic product in the country.

Investing in childcare (increased provision) will increase employment by creating more opportunities in the childcare industry; increased the available time for women to engage in the economy; other jobs will be created through such social enterprise business model, which in turn will result in a better workforce. High-quality ECCE is central to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals from improving children’s health and development to reducing gender inequalities in employment and unpaid care.

It is crucial to recognize the link between climate change and unpaid care work. As we are in a constant changing world enduring various climate fluctuations, women and girls’ responsibility of unpaid care and domestic work intensifies.

It has proven that COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated women and girl burden of the unpaid care and domestic work. The pandemic continues to deepen pre-existing inequalities and exposing vulnerabilities in social, political and economic systems. There is therefore an urgent need to further enhance women’s economic empowerment in the form of investments in care work and early child-care to both counter these negative impacts, and to energize the drive towards the ‘’great re - set’’ as we also focus on building back better for women empowerment in the post-COVID 19 period.

Objectives of the assignment:

The purpose of the national consultative workshop is to engage key and relevant stakeholders from the government, private sector, faith groups, and civil society organizations to establish a common and shared understanding on unpaid care work as a socio-economic and technical barrier for advancing gender equality and women empowerment (GEWE). Additionally, the workshop will also seek to explore transformative mechanisms of addressing drivers of unpaid care work. This will be achieved through the following specific objectives:

• To promote a shared understanding and buy-in of the dynamics of unpaid care work and its impact socio-economic among men, women, boys and girls.
• To validate the qualitative findings of the rapid care analysis to enhance collective build buy-in for the need to recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
• To solicit input from stakeholders on policy legal, and technical aspects of the on-going innovative and effective interventions addressing underlying issues of unpaid care work.
• To strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders on the key issues of the care economy in according to the 5R framework in South Africa.
• To Getting an overview on the ongoing initiatives and programmes on unpaid care work in SA from civil society and private sector

Scope of work:

The workshop will use presentations, discussion groups, plenary session, panel discussions, Question, and Answer session for effective delivery and understanding of the workshop content. The workshop will ensure maximum participation by all participants Specific activities of the workshop will be guided by a detailed programme of events addressing the purpose of the workshop through the delivery of the specific objectives

Duties and Responsibilities

Duties and Responsibilities:

The purpose of the assignment to provide facilitation of the 3R National Consultative workshop by ensuring that the objectives of the workshop are achieved within the given time with full participation of participants and stakeholders. This purpose will be achieved through the following specific objectives:

• To ensure delivery of a coherent workshop by producing a clear conceptual framework for the workshop.
• To ensure proper coordination of the workshop activities in terms of flow of presentations and discussions as well as coverage with respect to allocated time guided by the agenda.
• To stimulate open and productive discussions involving all participants in plenary and smaller group
• To consolidate workshop activities in form of presentations, discussions, questions and comments from small group discussions and plenary.
• To provide a full report of the workshop activities and deliverable, recommendations, lessons and participants’ evaluation of the workshop.

Deliverables:

By the end of the three-day workshop, the Facilitation Consultant will be accountable to submit an Inception Report, Facilitation of the workshop and a comprehensive workshop report as key deliverables as detailed in the table below highlighting the following as specific areas of interest:

1. Common perceptions and specific trends and concerns about nature and distribution of unpaid care work tasks and burden among women, men boys and girls in South Africa.
2. The status of policy and legal instruments addressing unpaid care work in South Africa.

Work Schedule:

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity;
• Integrity;
• Professionalism;

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example;

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:

• Excellent knowledge in policy and programmatic aspects of the care economy with respect to gender equality and women empowerment;
• Knowledge of national programmatic processes, planning, monitoring & evaluation;
• Good knowledge of principles of Results-Based Management;
• Excellent listening and pedagogical skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree development studies, economics, development planning, gender and any other related technical field.

Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience in the area of gender and women empowerment, program management including design and implementation;
• Experience in facilitating at least two capacity-building workshops in program development or in the United Nations system.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English is required;
• Understanding of South African Indigenous languages (IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Afrikaans, Sepedi, and Sesotho) is an advantage for conducting the assignment;
• Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset.

Note:

Please note that applications without a completed and signed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

UN Women Personal History form (P-11) can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need. 

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application. At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)