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. 

Domestic and care work is essential to people’s lives. It is a cornerstone of economic growth considering it is the work that is done before any other work can be done. Domestic and care work includes both paid and unpaid labor involving cleaning, cooking, washing and ironing, taking care of family members, including children, the elderly, those who are ill or have disabilities, as well as household pets, gardening, guarding the house and driving for the family.  With increasing aging populations, the care work sector is expected to grow. Domestic and care work disproportionately falls on women, especially migrant workers for cheap wages and heavy workload. However, despite their essential contribution to drive society, domestic and care workers are undervalued and underregulated. This results in limited or zero protection for them. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the high dependence of many economies on domestic and care workers. The pandemic has brought a new sense of urgency to ensure provision of social protection, employment benefits and other support for workers in this economic sector. This also requires specific policies, programming and legislation and importantly coordinated efforts among stakeholders. 

The supply and demand gap in the domestic and care work market is opening spaces for new players to step in to provide solutions. Work done by UN Women as part of the WeEmpowerAsia programme and the UN Women Care Accelerator programme to address the burden of unpaid care work has found that market-based solutions through care entrepreneurship are emerging to address the lack of accessible, affordable, and quality domestic and care services in the region. This requires partnerships with different entities to increase knowledge, capacity and resource to address the issues domestic and care workers face in order to transform the care economy towards gender equality and inclusive and sustainable development and the Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) & Migration unit is looking to expand leadership in this area.  

In UN Women’s Strategic Note for Asia and the Pacific (2023 -2025) transforming the Care Economy has been identified as a key priority and multiple partnerships, programmes and future opportunities have been established to advance this work.

At the regional level in Asia Pacific, UN Women has recently launched a new regional care programme – ‘Gender-Inclusive Care Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Programme (GICEEP)’, a joint initiative of Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Visa Foundation, UN Women Asia and the Pacific, BopInc, and SAFEEM. The program aims to promote women's economic empowerment by fostering a more inclusive care entrepreneurship ecosystem through business training, mentorship, access to networks and finance, and inclusive and gender-responsive business-building practices. The GICEEP's three pillars focus on developing Base of Pyramid solutions (in India and Bangladesh), implementing a gender-responsive care accelerator (accepting regional SMEs but priority given to those from India and Indonesia), and facilitating knowledge exchange to scale up entrepreneurship-based care solutions.

In addition, in UN Women in India, a programme on the care economy is being developed which includes developing a model that turns the childcare challenge into an employment and business opportunity by providing more qualitative, accessible, and affordable care-services directly to families or indirectly via employers or governments. In partnership with the UN Women Regional Office for Asia Pacific, the India Country Office plans to work with innovative enterprises to support these often women-led companies to advance their business solutions to become more viable and inclusive and therefore turn ‘care-entrepreneurship’ into a pathway to address the unequal care-burden.

As GICEEP is run from the ROAP, effective implementation will require expertise on-the-ground, both to support effective implementation of Pillar 2 among India care entrepreneurs, including mentorship/capacity building for increasing the provision of decent work for care workers; and Pillar 1, working to monitor the implementation of the pilot programme ‘Better Skills – Better Care’  in rural India in collaboration with  Dharmalife and Titli in India.

UN Women is therefore seeking a “National Consultant – Care Economy” to support the implementation of Pillars 1 and 2 of the GICEEP programme in India, which is focused on Base of the Pyramid Solutions as well as of the India component of the Care Accelerator. The recruited person will also be responsible to coordinate and exchange with the regional offices and India and contribute to developing new programming on care in the India Office.

The consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Regional Lead, Women’s Economic Empowerment & Migration, ROAP, in close coordination with the Country Programme Manager, SCE, UN Women India Office. The consultant will be based in New Delhi.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Support implementation of the Asia-Pacific Care Accelerator, including coordination of India cohort community engagement meetups and potentially including training and mentorship to care accelerator participants on gender equality, sexual harassment, and/or gender-responsive business policies linked to decent work creation [20%];
• Develop training materials for entrepreneurs and potentially government representatives on the care economy;
• Coordinate and support implementation of the India pilot of GICEEP, liaising with partners on the ground and monitor delivery of outputs as per project timelines (20-30%);
• Support in collecting and drafting information for the learnings reports and related reports;
• Develop new programme proposals and support for Care Entrepreneurship; working closely with the Regional Office for Asia Pacific to position it within the wider Care Strategy (40-50%);
• Support the operationalization of the newly established G20 Care Accelerator Fund including resource mobilization for the Fund;
• Support to UN Women India on policy advocacy efforts and broader GICEEP programme advocacy/events including G20.

Expected Deliverables:

The consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Regional Lead, Women’s Economic Empowerment & Migration, ROAP, in close coordination with the Country Programme Manager, SCE, UN Women India Office to achieve the following deliverables:

• Monthly progress report on implementation of the Asia-Pacific Care Accelerator - 31 October 2023.
• Developed training materials for entrepreneurs and potentially government representatives on the care economy - 31 December 2023
• Monthly progress report on implementation of the India pilot of GICEEP including list of deliverables coordinated and submitted to project partners - 31 January 2024
• Drafted background information for the learnings reports and related reports - 31 March 2024
• Developed programme proposals and support for Care Entrepreneurship - 31 May 2024
• New financial/non-financial connections/ partnerships established for operationalization of the newly established G20 Care Accelerator Fund including resource mobilization for the Fund - 31 July 2024
• Technical inputs provided to UN Women India on policy advocacy efforts and broader GICEEP programme advocacy / events including G20 - 30 September 2024.

Monthly progress reports and time sheets are to be submitted by last day of every month during October 2023 – September 2024, mentioning the activities done during the respective months.

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.

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 behaviour 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.

Functional Competencies:

• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.
• Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills.
• Focuses on impact and result for the partners and responds positively to feedback.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:   

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Statistics, Political or Social Science, Economics, International Development Studies, Gender/ Women’s Studies is required.
• 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 2 years of progressively responsible work experience in development programme/project implementation, coordination, monitoring and capacity building.
• A project/programme management certification would be an added advantage.
• Experience conducting capacity building trainings is required.
• Excellent knowledge of the care economy and gender is required.
• Strong knowledge of decent work and sexual harassment an advantage.
• Good knowledge of social norms in the context of women’s economic empowerment is desirable.
• Research experience in women’s economic empowerment is desirable.
• Knowledge of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc), spreadsheet and database packages, web-based management systems.
• Demonstrable understanding of gender equality outcomes, or the ability to develop this knowledge.
• Understanding of private sector capacity to support development for women.
• Ability to work independently and with minimal supervision.

Language:

• Strong writing skills in English and good command over Hindi.

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://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment;
• 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 Experience relevant to the assignment (10 points);
• Working knowledge and experience of writing on Gender Issues (5 points);

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

• Written Sample (20 points)
• Interview (80 points)

Please Note:

• For an assignment requiring travel, consultants of 65 years or more require full medical examination and statement of fitness to work prior to engagement in the consultancy.
• Due to large number of potential applicants only competitively selected candidates will be contacted for remaining steps of the selection process.
• The consultant is expected to use their own computer equipment. The office will not provide any computer equipment for this assignment.
• This is a full-time assignment. The consultant is expected to disclose any outside activity and shall not be permitted to take up any outside work during the course of this assignment.

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.