Antecedentes
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.
UN Women’s work on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is guided by its Strategic Plan, which articulates how UN Women will leverage its triple mandate, encompassing normative support, UN System coordination and operational activities. In its integrated approach to address the root causes of inequality and affect broader systems change, supporting positive social norms is a critical area. UN Women’s new Strategic Plan both identifies discriminatory social norms as a structural barrier to gender equality and women’s empowerment and positions positive social norms as a high-leverage mechanism to advance UN Women’s vision.[1] Supporting positive social norms has been identified as one of the seven systemic outcomes in the Strategic Plan.
While the inclusion of social norms as a specific outcome has been a recent development, UN Women programming has addressed social norms change directly or indirectly in its broader advocacy on gender equality and specifically in its work within thematic areas that require behavioural and attitudinal change, such as ending violence against women and girls and promoting women in leadership. UN Women adopts an integrated approach to transform the unequal power relations and discriminatory social norms, behaviours and practices and promote those that advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes engaging men and boys as allies to promote respectful, equitable and non-violent relationships, contribute to transforming negative stereotypes constraining women’s participation in public and private life, addressing social norms that prevent women and girls’ access to humanitarian assistance, and increase the acceptance of women as leaders and agents of change. Social norms work is also relevant in cross cutting areas such as education, health, sports and peace, humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction.
UN Women regularly evaluates its own work to enhance accountability, inform decision making and contribute to learning on gender equality. The Independent Evaluation Service provides evidence for a more relevant, effective and efficient UN Women with greater impact on the lives of women and girls it serves. UN Women carries out strategic corporate, country portfolio and regional evaluations, as well as decentralized evaluations. The Independent Evaluation Service leads strategic evaluations with the support of external evaluators. They assess effectiveness, organizational performance and normative and operational coherence.
Although programmatic efforts on changing social norms have been prevalent in UN Women’s efforts at the global, regional and country level; an explicit recognition of this area of work marks a shift in the organizations philosophy of embedding and advancing social norms work across the four thematic impact areas.[2] Accordingly, UN Women headquarters has taken initiative to begin work defining the social norms outcome area of work to streamline and better inform future programming directions. In this regard, the Independent Evaluation Service is undertaking a feminist collaborative evaluation. The evaluation will facilitate an in-depth regional approach to provide comprehensive analysis and evidence based on experiences with social norms change programming at the field level across Eastern and Southern Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific regions.
The UN Women Caribbean Multi-Country Office has been selected as one of the case studies from the Latin America and Caribbean region based on the desk review (meta-analysis of evaluations, review of annual reports, and the regional portfolio reviews), and consultations with UN Women personnel at regional and country levels. Case studies are a critical component of the evaluation, as they will explore the pathways of change and inform implicit/explicit theories of change that can provide inspiration and lessons learned for social norms programming efforts at UN Women. The approach will support implementation of innovative and adaptive development programme strategies focused on social norm change and documenting key lessons learned. The case study will be participatory and led by Regional Evaluation Specialists in collaboration with the UN Women office monitoring, report and/or evaluation officers and support from the National Evaluation Consultant. The case studies will engage rights holders, experts in social norms from the country, and civil society in surfacing their understandings of social norms efforts through storytelling or other feminist methodologies rooted in the country and local context.
[1] UN Women Strategic Plan (2022-2025)
[2] (i) Governance and participation in public life; (ii) women ’s economic empowerment; (iii) ending violence against women and girls; and (iv) as well as women, peace and security, humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction.
Deberes y responsabilidades
Objective of the Assignment
Under the overall supervision of the Regional Evaluation Specialist, work of the consultant will be home-based and require in-country travel in Barbados and potentially other countries in the Caribbean, the costs of which will be covered by UN Women. Approximately 20 days of work are estimated over the period from 15 August to 15 December 2023, with the bulk of effort between August and September 2023. The consultant may be requested to contribute to the following:
- Develop a stakeholder mapping of UN Women’s key stakeholders in the case-study country or countries of focus.
- Undertake feminist inquiry, storytelling and other feminist methodologies for participatory and inclusive data collection including through interviews and focus group discussions.
- Lead analyses (in-depth analysis of social norms related project/sub-theme/efforts implemented of the case study), including systematic document review and triangulation.
- Facilitate participatory workshops with: (a) UN Women office personnel, and (b) key civil society stakeholders focusing on social norms efforts.
- Draft a synthesis report based on data collection and analysis with substantive findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
- Address feedback and comments received from UN Women Caribbean Multi-Country Office, Independent Evaluation Service, and other experts.
Scope of Work and Deliverables
The consultant is expected to deliver the following results:
Deliverable 1: Data collection notes (including from workshop facilitation and all focus group discussions, key informant interviews, briefing presentation, etc.). Estimated timeline - 1st week of September 2023
Deliverable 2: Synthesis report of country case study incorporating feedback/inputs from UN Women Caribbean Multi-Country Office, Independent Evaluation Service, and other experts. Estimated timeline - 3rd week of September 2023
Deliverable 3: Presentation/facilitation of case study validation workshop (country and regional). Estimated timeline - 4th week of September 2023
Reporting Requirements
Under the overall supervision of the UN Women MCO – Caribbean Representative, with direct supervision of the Regional Evaluation Specialist for the Americas and Caribbean. The consultant will work in close consultation with relevant personnel of the Caribbean Multi-Country Office. The consultant will also interact and receive guidance from UN Women personnel working on the social norms outcome area and other Evaluation Specialists, national consultants, evaluation analysts and/or interns that may be engaged to support different tasks.
Competencias
Core Values:
- Respect for Diversity;
- Integrity;
- Professionalism.
Core Competencies:
- Teamwork
- Communicating and Information Sharing
- Self-Management and Emotional Intelligence
- Conflict Management
- Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making
- Good analytical skills
- Flexibility
- Strong work ethics and commitment to humanitarian issues
Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:
Functional Competencies:
- Knowledge of the social, cultural, legal and political context of the Caribbean.
- Fluency in English and ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing.
- Ability to interact independently and as part of a team.
- Technical skills in primary and secondary data collection.
- Analytical and report writing skills.
Habilidades y experiencia requeridas
The consultant should meet the following criteria:
Education:
- Master’s degree in relevant subjects: social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, international relations and/or development, or other relevant areas or bachelor’s degree with two years of additional work experience.
- Or in absence of an advanced degree, a bachelor’s degree in the above stated areas with 5 years of experience in social norms as well as relevant research, monitoring or evaluation areas.
Experience:
- At least five years of proven experience and technical expertise on feminist inquiry, qualitative research, participatory data collection methods such as storytelling, outcome harvesting, or most significant change in the field of gender equality and women’s empowerment is required.
- At least three years of experience in social norms programming in the Caribbean demonstrative of a context-specific understanding of social norms and behavioural research is desirable.
- Experience facilitating workshops with diverse stakeholders.
- Excellent drafting and analytical skills to produce and present concise reports.
- Experience working with UN Women or the UN system and a solid understanding of its programming, coordination, and normative roles at the regional and/or country level is an asset.
Language:
- Fluency in English is required
Location and Duration:
- The consultancy will be based in home based with expected travel to Barbados and potentially other countries in the Caribbean.
- The consultant will be engaged for a maximum of 20 working days during the period between August and December 2023.
Travel:
- Where travel is required, the travel cost will be covered by the MCO - Caribbean
Remuneration:
- The consultancy fee will be negotiated before contracting. Each payment will be based on a predefined and formal agreement between UN Women and the consultant and will be disbursed based on satisfactory completion of agreed deliverables.
- The remuneration for this contract type is an all-inclusive fee, the organization will not be liable for additional cost or benefits. Hence, it is the responsibility of the consultant to take out adequate medical insurance for the duration of the contract and it is recommendable that the policy includes coverage for COVID-19 related illness. The medical coverage should be international when the contract requires missions or international assignment.
- All data collected is the property of UN Women and should be provided upon request.
- If selected for this vacant post, proof of medical coverage should be presented within the first two months of the contract.
Hardware, Software, and Communication:
- The consultant must be equipped with a fully functional laptop, which must comfortably run Office 365 programs, using operating systems Microsoft Windows 10/11, or Mac OS X 10.11 or upward. The consultant must be reasonably accessible by email and telephone (preferably mobile). The use of reliable, internet-based (Skype or equivalent) is required.
References:
- Minimum of three client references that include the name of the contact person, title and contact information will be requested.
Documents to be Submitted:
- 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
- Applications received without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.
- Please group all documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows one document to be uploaded.
Notes:
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