UN WOMEN Jobs - 77714- International Consultant for Gender Responsive Bud

International Consultant for Gender Responsive Budgeting

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Home - Based with Travel

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

02-Apr-2018

Application Deadline :

25-Mar-18 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 (70 working days)

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 (70 working days)

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

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 and the third gender as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

All human development and human rights issues involve gender dimensions. UN Women globally focuses on key priority areas that are fundamental to women’s equality, and that can unlock progress across the board. UN Women’s priority areas include increasing women’s leadership and participation in political spaces, ending violence against women, enhancing women’s economic empowerment, engaging in all aspects of women peace and security processes, making gender equality central to national planning and budgeting through Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) and advancing gender in intergovernmental processes.

UN Women’s work on GRB involves ensuring that national planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation processes incorporate a gender perspective. UN Women’s GRB programmes at the regional and country level have made significant contribution towards this by building political support, developing technical resources and capacities, generating good practices for improving women's access to services and increasing accountability for Gender Equality and Women’s empowerment (GEWE). At the forefront of global, regional and local advocacy for application of GRB, UN Women has built partnerships with diverse government, inter-governmental and non-governmental partners to further efforts and demonstrate GRB’s relevance to sustainable development, aid effectiveness, public sector reform and financing for development.

In Sri Lanka, the first initiative on GRB was facilitated by the Commonwealth Secretariat and Canadian International Development Agency to be carried out by Ministry of Finance and Planning. This launched a collaborative study on the impact of Sri Lanka budget by examining actual expenditure in 1996, with a specific objective to improve on the future budgets. The study covered health, education, social services, industries, and agriculture sectors with an additional analysis on the gender distribution of employment throughout the Public Service.

In 2003, an initiative led by UNIFEM focused on post budgetary assessment of the National Budget in Sri Lanka from a gender perspective. This entailed a detailed budget analysis for the Ministry of Women Affairs (MOWA), Ministry of Samurdhi, Ministry of Social Welfare, Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Employment and Labour. More recently, in 2016, efforts on GRB were reinvigorated through a Cabinet memorandum from Hon’ble Minister of Women and Child Affairs that was approved by the cabinet to reserve a minimum of 25% allocations for rural development for economic advancement of women. In the same year, UN Women commissioned a scoping study on GRB with a three-fold objective to:

assess the existing mechanisms and practices around gender responsive planning and budgeting in Sri Lanka;
identify constraints as well as opportunities or entry points for integrating gender in the planning and budgeting process; and
develop and present a roadmap for GRB for Sri Lanka.

Currently, UN Women is also conducting a research to apply GRB through the lens of women with disability and economic empowerment. The research will primarily generate evidence on responsiveness of policies/programmes in the employment sector to the specific concerns of women with disabilities; and use these findings to enhance knowledge and capacities of the National and Provincial Government on formulation and implementation of gender responsive policies and programmes in the sector for women with disabilities.

UN Women’s Multi Country Office (MCO), based in New Delhi, India, covers four countries of the region, i.e., India, Bhutan, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. UN Women India MCO is currently implementing a project with the objective of identifying strategies and operational approaches to strengthen on-going efforts on GRB in Sri Lanka, at the national and provincial levels. Insights generated from this project will enable key stakeholders at the national and provincial level to accelerate their efforts to ensure that women’s priorities are adequately reflected in national budgeting processes, and to make concrete changes for adequate resource allocation towards women’s priorities. The focus areas of the project are the following:

Establishing/strengthening institutional mechanisms for GRB.
Generating evidence on how sectoral policies/programmes could be made more gender responsive.
Enhancing capacities of officials for sustaining change.
Strengthening the link between outlays to outcomes through gender audit.

Within this context, UN Women Sri Lanka seeks the services of a Technical Expert to undertake GRB analysis of policies and programmes from a gender perspective in two key sectors, one of them to be preferentially labour and employment sector. The research will aim to generate/strengthen existing (through collation and analysis of UN Women’s previous and ongoing research initiatives on GRB in Sri Lanka) as well as new evidence on the existing gaps in policy/programme design, budgeting, implementation and evaluation from a gender perspective. The focus will be to ensure that the analysis is conducted from the lens of most marginalised women in Sri Lanka.

The findings of the analysis will be used to enhance capacities of officials at the national and provincial (two provinces to be selected) level to strengthen institutional planning and budgetary processes on GRB.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the direct supervision of GRB Programme Analyst-UN Women Sri Lanka and overall guidance of Project Officer- UN Women India, the Technical Expert will lead research on the two identified sectors using the GRB framework to analyse policies/schemes/programmes. The Technical Expert will also be required to enhance capacities of relevant officials using the evidence generated on GRB analysis. In both sectors, the analysis will primarily focus on conducting a thorough desk review of programmes/schemes of the relevant departments from a gender lens, analysis of the existing data and providing concrete recommendations to ensure that policies and programmes respond to the specific concerns of sectors with specifics focus on marginalized women. The research should also capture perceptions of officials at the central government/provincial government level. Capturing of primary data from the field will also be desirable to strengthen and validate findings of the desk review.

The Technical Expert will work with the teams of UN Women and relevant constituents within the Government of Sri Lanka to ensure that the research includes diverse perspectives and meets the required standards of quality, within the given time and cost specifications.

Therefore, the Technical Expert will have the following tasks:

Organise inception meetings to discuss the scope of work with relevant research partners including concerned government stakeholders.
Develop a mixed-methods methodology note with key tools, for analysing data/inputs for select schemes/programmes of the Government along the planning, budgeting, implementation and evaluation phase/s; specifically ensuring that sex-disaggregated and gender-aware data is captured and analysed.
Finalise methodology note with inputs from UN Women and Government partners.
Conduct the research using GRB as a framework to examine the extent to which the policies/programmmes and budgets address the specific concerns of marginalized women in the two identified sectors.
Develop an intermediate report capturing initial findings and discussion based on analysis of data and inputs.
Develop final reports (separately focusing on two selected sectors) upon incorporation of inputs from relevant partners, with key recommendations and way forward for strengthening mechanisms, systems and processes for the two selected sectors.
Develop key training modules and facilitate trainings for relevant government departments on GRB and application of GRB in the two sectors.

Deliverables:

Briefing note with expectations of relevant partners vis-à-vis the research study, capturing key inputs on the scope of work – 20% payment for 20 days work;
Methodology note on the research study, including key research tools, data analysis, sampling, etc. – 30% payment for 20 days work;
Intermediate report with initial findings and discussion - 20% payment for 20 days work;
Final report with key recommendations and way forward for strengthening mechanisms, systems and processes for the two selected sectors- 30% payment for 10 days work.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

Demonstrates commitment to UN Women’s mission, vision and values;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge Management and Learning:

Shares knowledge and experience;
Actively works towards continuing personal learning, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.

Development and Operational Effectiveness:

Ability to perform a variety of specialized tasks related to design, planning and implementation of programme, managing data, reporting;
Ability to provide input to and use new IT based systems.

Leadership and Self-Management:

Focuses on result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
Remains calm, in control even under pressure;
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
Good understanding of gender and development in South Asia;
Demonstrable ability to work in a team;
Ability to work under pressure;
Good writing and communication skills;
Excellent computer literacy and skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Master’s Degree in Social Sciences/ Social Work /Gender Studies/Public Administration/Policy or related fields.

Experience:

Minimum 5 years of experience at the national/state level working with development projects including hands-on experience of design, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of projects preferably on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights;
Experience on financial/budgetary data analysis, statistics and quantitative and qualitative research is required;
Experience of working with national/ state governments; particularly on GRB is highly desirable.

Language:

Proficiency in English; good command over the national / local languages is desirable.

Application:

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs;
Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment;
Applications received after the close date will not be accepted;
Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Evaluation and Selection Criteria

Criteria for shortlisting of CVs will be based on the following assessment:

Required Degree and Qualification (5 points);
Minimum 5 years of experience at the national/state level working with development projects including hands-on experience of design, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of projects preferably on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights (5 points);
Experience on financial/budgetary data analysis, statistics and quantitative and qualitative research is required (5 points);
Experience of working with national/ state governments; particularly on GRB is highly desirable (5 points).

The evaluation process for selection of the candidate will be based on the following assessment:

Interview (70 Marks)
Written Test (30 Marks)

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.