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.

UN Women supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality, and work with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes, and services needed to ensure that the standards are effectively implemented and truly benefit women and girls worldwide. It works globally to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals a reality for women and girls and stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on four strategic priorities (i)Women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems (ii) Women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy (iii) All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence (iv) Women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and humanitarian action.  

Under the Strategic plan 2022-2025, UN Women Arab States is embarking on monitoring system strengthening for evidence generation, which is critical to support the key directional shifts. This is clearly demonstrated in the thought leadership on the production and provision of quantitative data in Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE), Violence Against Women (VAW), Women's Political Participation (WPP), and Women Peace and Security (WPS) and measuring the impact of programmes at national and smaller innovations for scale. The system strengthening will act as a key avenue for strengthening programmatic implementation, service delivery, advocacy, and technical coordination at the country and regional levels. Stronger systems and robust monitoring capacities will optimize conditions for programme planning and implementation toward achieving amplified results for women and girls, particularly the most marginalized.  

This system strengthening is based on the conceptual framework and econometrics for measuring the resilience of women to crises and displacement. The system explores how vulnerable women cope with shocks and stressors differently than others, tracks changes in their resilience over time, and seeks to create structures of attributes that drive changes in their lives by examining multiple layers of factors. This evidence will help UN Women uniquely identify and focus on the big levers and direct and indirect factors that most significantly impact the organization’s results on women under its programmatic monitoring.

Evidence that will be generated under this monitoring transformation will be used by UN Women programme staff to inform the design of its programmes to amplify results and to ensure that the programmes aiming at empowering women address issues that might, directly and indirectly, hinder/advance programmatic results.

This consultancy is expected to support the Regional Programme Management on Resilience Monitoring in the development and further contextualization of this monitoring transformation model by performing data management, analytics, and support in the automation of methodologies to support real-time management of projects/programmes. 

Objective of the Assignment:

The Economist will report to the programme management Specialist on Resilience, and will be responsible for the following functions:

• Lead advanced econometric analysis of resilience monitoring data, which includes data clean-up, harmonization, and conversion as well as, developing supporting documentation to facilitate the public understanding and use of the datasets.
• Support the Programme Management Specialist on the automation of resilience econometrics, monitoring, and analysis across UN Women thematic areas; Women Economic Empowerment (WEE), Violence Against Women (VAW), Women Political Participation (WPP), and ensuring quality of analysis performed/produced.   
• Provide technical assistance to UN Women on methodological innovations in the analysis of results.   

Duties and Responsibilities

• Undertake resilience analysis based on UN Women’s econometrics for measuring the resilience of women impacted by crises and displacement through the application of the GS-RCI methodology and econometrics.
• Support the measurement of individual resilience aiming to identify key resilience components of women impacted by crises and displacement, exposed to different shocks and stressors. This includes data analysis, elaboration of findings, and contribution to relevant publications.
• Management of datasets, which includes clean-up, harmonization, and automation of resilience measurement.
• Contribute to the development of technical, statistical, and analytical resilience monitoring frameworks to support timely planning, and monitoring of resilience-focused programmes, products, and services.  

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;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional Competencies:

• Work experience in more than one location or area of work;
• Extent and relevance of experience in food security and resilience econometric analysis;
• Ability to plan and organize own work, deliver results and meet deadlines, within a multi-disciplinary team;
• Ability to write clear and concise technical documents;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• University degree in Economics, Development Economics, Statistics, and Econometrics. (University degree is required, and an advanced university degree is preferred);
• Relevant education/certification in data analysis using econometric models, and quantitative impact evaluation. Resilience analysis is an asset;
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least five years of relevant experience in economic and quantitative analysis, economic modeling, and applying econometric techniques preferably but not limited to the field of gender equality, and women's economic empowerment;
• Experience in Structural Equation Modelling (MIMIC) and the use of econometric packages such as Stata or R is a requirement;
• Familiarity and experience with impact evaluation techniques are considered a strong asset;
• Extent and relevance of experience in ‘translating’ complex results from quantitative analysis into user-friendly communication;

Language Requirements:

Working knowledge of English is a must. The Arabic language is an asset. 

Evaluation Criteria:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology: Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for the financial evaluation.

Criteria Weight Technical: 70% (70 points)

• Criteria 1:  Graduate (Master’s) degree or higher in Economics, Development Economics, Statistics, or Econometrics. (20 points)
• Criteria 2:  Experience in data analysis using Structural Equation Modelling (MIMIC) and use of econometric packages such as Stata or R (40 points)
• Criteria 3:  Knowledge of gender equality, gender, resilience in protracted conflict and displacement settings (10 points)

Financial: Lowest Financial Proposal: 30% (30 points)

The points for the Financial Proposal will be allocated as per the following formula:

• Contract will be awarded to the technically qualified consultant who obtains the highest combined score (financial and technical);
• The points for the Financial Proposal will be allocated as per the following formula: (Lowest Bid Offered*)/ (Bid of the Consultant) x 30;
• 'Lowest Bid Offered' refers to the lowest price offered by Offerors scoring at least 49 points in the technical evaluation.

Application:

Interested Individual Consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• A cover letter with a brief presentation of your consultancy explaining your suitability for the work and a link to your portfolio of work;
• UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment;
• Personal CV; and Financial proposal; Proposed inclusive daily rate.

The above-mentioned documents should be merged in a standalone file including all of them since the online application submission does only permit to upload of one file per application. Incomplete submissions can be a ground for disqualification.

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.

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits employ, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity, and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)