Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the existing social inequalities across the world. The measures taken to mitigate the spread of the virus including lockdown and movement restriction measures are having an unprecedented negative impact of women and young girls with many of the progress made towards gender equality at the risk of being rolled back. Across the regions, the gendered impact of the COVID-19 is leading to increase in incidents of gender-based violence and women taking up additional unpaid care and household work.

Globally, women perform 76.2% of total unpaid care work, more than three times as much as men. In Asia and the Pacific, this rises to 80%. Currently, with children out of school, heightened care needs of the elderly and overwhelmed health services, it is anticipated that the additional demand for unpaid care will fall heaving on women. This is not only because of the existing structure of the workforce but also as a result of existing social norms. The gendered nature of care work predominately exists because of the prevalent patriarchal norms in our society and the traditional concepts around gendered roles in communities. It is one of the key drivers of gender inequality and the main barrier preventing women from getting into, remaining and progressing in the labor force. In 2018 global study, 606 million working age women said that they were not able to be part of the labor force because of unpaid care work while only 41 million men cited the same reason

Given the prolonged nature of the pandemic and the ‘new’ normal moving towards digital forms of education and work from home models, it is imperative to ensure recovery measures are inclusive and support equal participation of women and men in the labor force. In this regard, the pandemic provides a key opportunity to shift social norms towards greater gender equality. The work from home model allows for greater balancing of work and care responsibilities for both women and men. We have seen in some society’s; men are increasingly taking up shared responsibilities in unpaid care work. If initiatives as part of COVID 19 response measures can be framed to encourage more young boys and men to increase their share of the unpaid care work, it can have a positive knock on impact on the division of labor at the household level and entrenched gendered roles post COVID.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objective of the Assignment:

The UNDP’s Asia-Pacific regional programme ‘Transforming Future of Work for Gender Equality’ led by the regional gender team in close collaboration with the UNDP India Country Office is  lookin to recruit a behavioural insight expert that would identify the gender norms and behavioral barriers that are driving the gender inequality related to unpaid care and household work in a selected geographical location in India and implement a nudge that would contribute towards equal sharing of care and household responsibilities amongst men, boys and women and girls.

Scope of Work:

Under the overall supervision of the Regional Gender Advisor Team Lead and India Country Office (CO) Inclusive Growth Head, the agency will be responsible for, but not limited to:

• Review any relevant national assessments, conduct consultations with stakeholders and focus group discussions with the target population to gain a deeper understanding of the existing ecosystem for the selected geographical location; 
• Submit the final methodology which would include the behavioral insights framework that would inform the designing of the “nudges” that would best deliver the intended change, data that should be collected to measure the impact of the “nudges”, target audience, sample size and a roll out workplan; 
• Design the ‘nudge’ in the form of a virtual pilot using evidence-driven approaches and develop the necessary tools to implement it, including any key materials and messages that would be used in the virtual pilot in consultation with UNDP and relevant partners; 
• Conduct a small-scale virtual pilot of the nudge using online platforms and collect evidence in a scientific manner. Measure the impact and document the results, key insights and lessons learnt from the pilot; 
• Submit final report with recommendations for scale up and final comments from UNDP incorporated.

Duretion of the Assignment:

40 working days over 5 months

Duty Station:

Home-based

Deliverables/Final Products:

Based on the aforementioned criterion of the tasks associated with this Terms of Reference, the consultant will be responsible for:

Monitoring and Progress Controll:

The consultant will be working under overall supervision of Regional Gender Team Leader and Inclusive Growth Head of the India Country Office. S/he will work closely with UNDP Asia-Pacific’s Gender Team and India Country Office colleagues as appropriate.

The review and approval of payments will be made by the assigned supervisor(s) within 14 days.

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Daily Fee. Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive Daily Fee for the contract period. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal.

Payment Schedule:

Payments will be done upon completion of the deliverables/outputs as approved by supervisor(s) and as per below percentages:

In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Travel costs shall be reimbursed at actual but not exceeding the quotation from UNDP approved travel agent. The provided travel allowance shall not exceed UNDP DSA rates.

Competencies

Core Competencies:

• Innovation: Ability to make new and useful ideas work;
• Leadership: Ability to persuade others to follow;
• People Management: Ability to improve performance and satisfaction;
• Communication: Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform;
• Delivery: Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement;
• Initiative: Displays initiative, sets challenging outputs for her/himself and willingly accepts new work assignments.

Functional/Technical Competencies:

• Ability to perform tasks in timely manner and under pressure, to tight deadlines;
• Ability to communicate verbally and in writing with a wide range of partners persuasively and collaboratively;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team seamlessly using a range of modern means of communication as required;
• Proficiency and experience with Microsoft Office software and applications.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Masters-level degree in behavioral and social sciences, political science, development studies, conflict studies or related fields.

Experience:

• At least five years of experience conducting behavioral insight research;
• At least three year of experience working on rolling out and implementing interventions/projects aiming to test, observe and analyze behaviors under changing conditions;
• Knowledge of, experience or research analyzing the behavioral trait leading to gender inequality;
• Prior work experience in Asia and the Pacific would be preferred.

Language:

• Excellent English communication skills.

EVALUATION OF CANDIDATES:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative Analysis: The candidates will be evaluated through Cumulative Analysis method. When using the weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
• Having received the highest score out of set of weighted combine technical evaluation of desk review and interview (70%), and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment. 

**Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% marks in the Technical evaluation would be considered for Financial evaluation.

Technical Evaluation Criteria:

1. Criteria 1: Relevance in education background – Max 10 points;
2. Criteria 2: At least five years of experience conducting behavioral insight research – Max 20 points;
3. Criteria 3: At least three year of experience working on interventions/projects aiming to test, observe and analyze behaviors under changing conditions Max 20 points;
4. Criteria 4: Knowledge & experience of research analyzing the behavioral trait leading to gender inequality based on CV/company profile – Max 10 points
5. Criteria 5: Prior work experience in Asia and the Pacific would be preferred – Max 10 points;

Financial Evaluation (30%)

Financial proposals from all technically qualified candidates will be scored out 30 marks based on the formula provided below. The maximum marks (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal.

All other proposals will receive points according to the following formula:

• p = y (µ/z).

Where:

• p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated;
• y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal;
• µ = price of the lowest priced proposal;
• z = price of the proposal being evaluated.

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSAL:

Interested individual consultant must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application system only allows to upload maximum one document:

• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and financial proposal using the template provided in Annex III. (Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Daily Fee. Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive Daily Fee for the contract period. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal.
• Personal CV and P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.
• A cover letter, including  a brief description of why the individual considers him/herself/themselves as the most suitable for the assignment

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. The short listed candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified.

ANNEXES:

Annex I - TOR
Annex II - General Terms and Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Individual Contractors
Annex III - Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and financial proposal
Annex IV - P11 Form for ICs
 

All documents can also be be downloaded from: UNDP Procurement Notice for this Job