Background

Agriculture continues to be the backbone of the economies of most countries in Africa. Empirical evidence shows that women represent over half of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa ( UNEP, UN Women, PBSO and UNDP, 2013).  Women’s substantive contribution to agriculture and their vital role in ensuring family food security have been widely documented; however, gender-based inequalities in access to and control of productive and financial resources inhibit agricultural productivity and undermine resilience and sustainability efforts. 

Furthermore, the agricultural sector is challenged by re-occurring stresses and shocks caused by environmental degradation, natural resource depletion and climatic variations that disproportionately increase the challenges faced by women and other marginalized farmers. In response to climate and environmental challenges, a range of actors have endorsed Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) as a means of enhancing farmers’ climate resilience. The gender gap in agriculture affects how men and women access, participate, adopt and benefit from CSA (Jost, 2014). This implies that an integrated approach for addressing the factors behind the gender gap in productivity would also contribute to enhance women’s access, adoption and benefit from CSA.

To provide specific evidence of the links between women’s empowerment, sustainable agricultural production and economic growth, UN Women Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa (ESARO), the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) Africa, and the World Bank in 2015 undertook a joint study 'Costing the Gender Gap in Agricultural Productivity in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda’. The report provides a unique quantification of the costs in terms of lost growth opportunities and an estimate of what societies, economies and communities would gain were the gender gaps in agricultural productivity to be addressed.

Following the 2015 cost of the gender gap report and its dissemination, there is a growing demand from Malawi to build on the existing evidence through a country field study and contextualize the findings and expand on the national policy analysis including costing of the solutions. 

Furthermore, there is an expressed interest to explore and quantify the link and impact of CSA on the gender gap in productivity and suggest strategies and tools that could help in closing the gender gap in productivity through the adoption of CSA practices by women farmers.  Such empirical analysis could further contribute to close the knowledge gap with regards to CSA and gender (UNEP, 2016; World Bank et al., 2015); and strengthen the evidence to support cost-effective context-based policy decisions to promote CSA that benefit both men and women.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will substantiate the 2015 cost of the gender gap analysis with in-country field work and expand the analysis to include a focus on climate smart agriculture and aspects of environmental sustainability which will help address some of the limitations of the 2015 report. The consultant will in particular: 

• Undertake more targeted country field level analysis of the factors driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity and the adoption of climate smart agriculture;
• Based on the country analysis provide specific policy and programmatic recommendations (including the costing of the solutions) on how to narrow and ultimately close gender gaps in the agriculture sector, enhance climate resilience and ensure environmental sustainability. 

The consultant will undertake the assignment in close coordination with the UN Women and PEI country teams. In case of country missions, the UN Women and PEI country teams will jointly facilitate the organization of meetings with relevant stakeholders and assist with access to country level data and reports and other logistical arrangements as required.

The outputs from this assignment will be jointly owned by UNDP-UNEP PEI and UN Women.

Methodology:

The consultant will partly be home-based but will also require in-country missions.

The more targeted country field level analysis will engage at the level of the community and household and apply qualitative and quantitative methodologies and thereby explore in further detail:

• Additional factors that may explain the gender gap in agricultural productivity (that were not highlighted in the cost of gender gap study (e.g. access to land, women’s time poverty and unpaid care work). The emphasis here is to identify, describe and explain the socio-economic, institutional and policy constraints that influence the gender gap in agricultural productivity in the selected countries;
• The country specific factors identified as driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity in step 1 to validate these and gain a better understanding of how they could be addressed in the country context. To achieve this, a quantitative analysis of the determinants of access to factors of production by gender and how simulated policy instruments and options could affect these factors and their relationships could help in closing the gender gap in agricultural productivity;
• Building on the field work and existing research develop a more accurate understanding of the women’s and men’s vulnerability to climatic variations and environmental degradation and how this links to gender gaps in the agriculture sector;
• Identify in clear terms the links between usage of factors of production (land, fertilizer, seeds and labor) and gender gap productivity on one hand and between the adoption of CSA and gender gap on the other hand and how the combined effects of access to factors of production and adoption of CSA both affect the gender gap in productivity and environmental sustainability;
• Determine how men’s and women’s constraints may differ in relation to climate-smart inputs and options;
• From (d) and (e) infer whether the same factors that explain the gender productivity gap explains gender gaps in access to and adoption of CSA as indicated by studies. This step is likely to require econometric modelling;
• Define if there is a link between women’s (lack of) ownership and / or access to land and adoption (lack of) of sustainable CSA approaches and the scope of this link;
• Contextualize and amend the policy solutions highlighted in the 2015 Cost of the Gender Gap report and identify additional policy,  programme and budgetary solutions to close the gender productivity and CSA gaps if relevant;
• Cost the solutions proposed to address (a) to (g) and provide recommendations on the most cost effective and impactful solutions relevant for the country context as well as a broader approach to CSA at the sub-regional and regional level.

The detailed methodology will be developed by the consultant recruited to undertake the assignment and might differ from country to country.  For the qualitative analysis, the methodology is expected to draw from the study by C. Josht, 2014 (seasonal calendar, daily activity clocks, changing farming practices mapping, Venn diagrams, interviews) and World Bank et al., 2015 (classification of gender roles in community, IFPRI toolkit for analysing asses relations, participatory vulnerability assessments, gender action learning systems, FAO’s socio-economic and gender analysis) for gender, agriculture and climate analysis.

Deliverables:

• Inception report outlining the proposed work plan and methodology for the assignment;
• Draft report covering point A-I outlined in the methodology section of these TOR submitted 14 working days after the conclusion of field mission;
• Revised draft report incorporating comments and feedback from PEI and UN Women;
• Presentation of the report key findings and recommendations at a national workshop;
• Final report incorporating comments and feedback from the national workshop, PEI and UN Women.

Competencies

Core Values/Guiding Principles:

Integrity:

• Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.

Professionalism:

• Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.

Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity:

• Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff;
• Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Core Competencies:

Ethics and Values:

• Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity.

Organizational Awareness:

• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.

Development and Innovation:

• Take charge of self-development and take initiative.

Work in teams:

• Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

Communicating and Information Sharing:

• Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication.

Self-management and Emotional Intelligence:

• Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others.

Conflict Management:

• Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.

Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing:

• Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge.

Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:

• Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making.

Functional Competencies:

• Strong understanding of climate smart and environmentally sustainable agriculture and how it links to gender equality and women’s empowerment;
• A demonstrated ability (through previous similar assignments) to analyze, compile and synthesize information in coherent and succinct formats;
• Strong understanding of gender and demonstrated experience in applying gender tools and conceptual frameworks;
• Demonstrated skills in statistical research and policy analysis and detailed knowledge of econometric and statistical tools applied in the context of agriculture, gender and climate analysis.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Minimum a post graduate degree (master degree; PhD will be an asset) in a relevant social sciences field such as agricultural economics, economics, statistics or other related field.

Experience:

• Minimum 7 years of professional experience  in gender and agriculture;
• Strong knowledge of gender, climate and environment in the context of the assignment is required;
• Proven substantive relevant experience in working with large data sets or other applied research; first-hand experience with using the LSMS-ISA data set is a bonus;
• Previous experience with gender disaggregated data and decomposition analysis preferred, bonus for analyses of the agricultural sector;

• Previous experience in writing comprehensive reports aimed at an audience that included policy-makers;
• Previous experience in Africa required and in Malawi desirable.

Language:

• Proficiency in written and spoken English.

Note:

• Applicants who had applied for this vacancy announcement before do not need to re-apply;
• Short listed candidates will contacted and requested to submit a proposal/methodology for the assignment as part of the assessment.