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.

In September 2015, governments united behind the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which features 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets that aim to end poverty, combat inequalities and promote prosperity by 2030 while protecting the environment. To successfully track the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, a robust and equally ambitious monitoring framework is needed.  

To support member states in implementing the 2030 Agenda, UN Women’s Flagship Programme Initiative Making Every Woman and Girl Count (MEWGC) aims to affect a radical shift in the production, availability, accessibility and use of quality data and statistics on key aspects of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

As the situation stands, six of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals have no indicator to monitor progress for women and girls. Of 54 gender-related indicators from the 232 SDG indicators, only 24% have data available since 2010. Additionally, just 17% of these gender-related indicators are available for two or more points in time. Of the 14 indicators to monitor implementation of SDG 5 to Eliminate Gender Inequality and Empowerment Women Everywhere, only two have accepted international standards for measurement and/or data collection is irregular (Tier I indicators).

Standards and measures are lacking to capture key issues for women, including the gender dimensions of poverty, gender and the environment, social norms and institutions, among others. And measurement of gender and intersecting inequalities needs to be prioritized, with significant methodological and data requirements.

The 2013 UN Women Post-2015 Position Paper and early work by Data2X established preliminary frameworks for quality gender data for monitoring SDG implementation, including meeting criteria of completeness, uniqueness, timeliness, validity, accuracy, and consistency. Additionally, UN Women’s first Gender and SDGs Monitoring Report 2018 identifies key bottlenecks in the production and use of gender statistics.

Recognizing the imperative for more and better-quality statistics across the SDGs, the 2014 A World That Counts: Mobilizing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development report noted: “new technologies are leading to an exponential increase in the volume and types of data available, creating unprecedented possibilities for informing and transforming society and protecting the environment. Governments, companies, researchers and citizen groups are in a ferment of experimentation, innovation and adaptation to the new world of data, a world in which data are bigger, faster and more detailed than ever before.” This seminal report called for "the integration of new and traditional data to produce high-quality information that is detailed, timely, and relevant for multiple purposes and to a variety of users."

Within this context, UN Women Eastern and Southern African Regional Office seeks to:

  • Assess the status of key activities and actors establishing systems to collect and use program-related data to monitor gender equality and women’s empowerment;
  • Review emerging activities on citizen-generated data and assess their potential to fill-in specific gender-related SDG indicator gaps;
  • Through examples of good and bad practices, document key uses and misuses of program-level and citizen-generated data sources for gender equality measurement;
  • In consultation with national statistics systems, UN and other stakeholders and new data producers, establish a set of methodological guidelines to inform the production of program level and citizen-generated with potential to use in the monitoring of gender-related SDGs;
  • Propose a set of recommendations for ensuring quality, relevance and added value of using program-level and citizen-generated data sources, and documenting their key benefits.

Under the supervision of the Regional Policy Advisor (Climate Smart Agriculture), and in close collaboration with the Regional Technical Advisor on Gender Statistics and SDGs Monitoring, the Consultant will produce a research paper mapping new sources of data with potential to fill-in gender statistics gaps.  The research paper will assess data tools in use, actors collecting such data, actors contributing to strengthening tools, and the type of data being collected. The paper will provide recommendations towards the practical adoption of new sources of data as official statistics to monitor gender-related SDG indicators and what is required for such data to be integrated into (or recognized as) official statistics.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Consultant will undertake a desk review combined with key informant interviews and a set of case studies to review good and bad practices in order to produce a research paper looking at new data with potential to fill-in gender data gaps: project/program data more broadly, and citizen-generated data (CGD) as a special subset of project/program data. The research paper will:

  • Assess the sources of program and citizen-generated data on the continent, how they are being used/misused and their potential to monitor the gender-related SDGs and the 2063 agenda and prepare a policy brief documenting the findings;
  • Analyze the kinds of project and programmatic data that exist in the region to support the generation of gender statistics, assess their quality;
  • Compile a compendium of new sources of data and of actors working to develop new data sources to measure gender-related indicators lacking reliable data, including Tier I, Tier II and Tier III indicators; capture sex-disaggregation of data; and complementary measures of unavailable gender-related SDG indicators;
  • Assess the current situation regarding tools (e.g., mobile phones, questionnaires, etc.) to collect and use citizen-generated data;
  • Establish a set of guidelines to inform production of program-level and citizen-generated data for use in monitoring gender-specific SDG indicators, drawing on existing best practices at global, regional and national levels, in collaboration with NSS, UN and other stakeholders and new data producers.

Research questions to be addressed include:

  • What actors (state and non-state organizations) are currently compiling program data and citizen-generated data relevant to monitoring gender-related SDGs, especially for SDG 5 and other specific gender-related indicators (for which information can be collected);
  • What kinds of tools are they using (e.g. mobile phones, questionnaires);
  • What engagement do citizen-generated data producers have with the National Statistical Systems (NSS) in select Eastern and Southern African countries? Do NSS have guidance on the collection and dissemination of program-level and citizen-generated data relevant to gender? What are case studies to draw lessons learned;
  • How are program-level data and citizen-generated data being shared and disseminated? What kind of reporting structures are in place? Who are they targeting with the data;
  • What barriers exist to uptake and use? How do National Statistical System actors perceive the production and use of program-level and citizen-generated data.

The final report will include forward-looking, concrete recommendations to strengthen project/program and citizen-generated data and recommendations on the support needed to integrate these alternative sources of data with traditional data.

To gather inputs on the research work, the Consultant will attend and present the draft paper at a conference bringing together Data Producers and Users, to be held at the SDGs Centre for Africa, in Rwanda 8-10 August 2018.

Deliverables:

  • Inception Report establishing the methodology for the research project and annotated outline of the paper;
  • Two drafts of the research paper (one for comment, the final incorporating comments);
  • Policy brief synthesizing findings for policymakers and SDG actors;
  • PowerPoint presenting the finished paper;
  • Presentation of the draft paper during the August 2018 regional conference.

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;

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-employment-values-and-competencies-definitions-en.pdf

Functional Competencies:

  • Ability to synthesize information into analytical report to inform strategic decision-making and partnerships;
  • Strong knowledge of Gender Statistics;
  • Strong analytical skills;

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Master’s degree or equivalent in gender statistics, pure statistics, mathematics, demography, social sciences, economics, human rights, gender/women's studies, international development, or a related field is required.

Experience:

  • At least 10 years of demonstrable experience in statistical methodology and in working experience at the national, regional and/or international level in the area of gender statistics, with proven experience working with alternative data sources;
  • Technical experience in innovative methods to collect gender-related and SDGs statistics;
  • Working relationships with existing organizations working on new data collection methods and tools;
  • Experience in working in a diversity team is an asset.

Languages:

  • Fluency in English is required;
  • Working knowledge of another official UN language is an asset.