Historique

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. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Women’s economic empowerment is essential to achieve sustainable development. Women workers transform local, national and regional economies across the Asia-Pacific through agriculturalwork, manufacturing, entrepreneurship and labour migration including domestic and care work. A combination of discriminatory laws, policies and gendered social norms create structural barriers for women seeking to realize their right to decent work and safe migration. This means women’s economic contributions are not translated effectively into increased social and economic equality.

Governance of Labour Migration in South and South East Asia (GOALS) is a joint programme between International Labour Organization (ILO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN Women with a support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The programme works towards safe, orderly and regular labour migration for all women and men from the Colombo Process Member States through strengthened collaboration and effective labour migration governance. It envisions a three-year (August 2020 – July 2023) strategic and comprehensive focus for positive change, increased social and economic benefits for women and men migrant workers, their families and the countries of origin. Working with the Colombo Process Member States, guided by the Colombo Process Thematic Area Working Groups (TAWGs), the programme conceptualizes the links between countries of origin and destination countries and strives to strengthen governance from policy to practice, regional to national, and vice versa.

Focusing on implementation in South Asian member states, GOALS is working in partnership with civil society, trade unions and other social partners in the region to achieve the following outcomes:

• Outcome 1: Colombo Process Member States develop and progress actionable commitments for strengthened labour migration governance and policy coherence through multilateral dialogue
• Outcome 2: Selected member States in South Asia have improved labour migration policies and practices, in particular on skills development and qualifications recognition, fostering fair and ethical recruitment, and sustainable reintegration
• Outcome 3: The evidence base on labour migration is strengthened to inform knowledge, dialogue, policy making and action

On increasing the evidence base on labour migration to inform dialogues, policy making and programming, the programme aims to undertake research projects to ensure programmatic outcomes are evidence-based. This includes a gender assessment of skills development opportunities and analyses of the current and future skills supply and demand that will directly inform and contextualize the regional frameworks and guidelines on skills and qualifications recognition.

1. RATIONAL, OBJECTIVES, AND SCOPE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

Rational

In international labour migration discourse, women migrant workers have become almost synonymous with domestic work. As a result, the representation of women – or potential representation of women – in sectors outside of domestic work has been rendered largely invisible. In addition, grouping all domestic workers in one category has led to a perception that there are more men domestic workers than women in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. While this is true in terms of sheer numbers, the critical importance of domestic work as a sector of employment for women – as well as the broad and structurally gendered spectrum of roles performed by men and women within domestic work – is too often overlooked. While men migrants are increasingly concentrated in vocational and mid-skilled occupations, women are overrepresented in low-skilled occupations, with a small number also concentrated in professional roles – with very few women employed at mid-skill level. Efforts to enhance the win-win proposition of labour migration through demand-driven recruitment has led to increasing attention on skills development and recognition, better jobs matching, and stakeholder engagement. As it is increasingly recognized that gender shapes the patterns of labour migration. Gender-disaggregated data on employment by sector, countries of origin and destination are then essential to understand the situation of migrant workers and importantly to ensure effective labour migration regimes for women.

According to the International Labour Organization, there were 23 million migrant workers in the GCC countries, and 39 per cent of whom were women. The Asia region continues to be the largest source of women workers in the GCC, with over three-quarters of Asian women migrant workers concentrated in domestic work. While the GCC also hosts the highest proportion of men in domestic work in the world, there is generally a segmentation of men into roles as drivers, guards, gardeners, and to a lesser extent cooks; with women overwhelmingly employed as generalists and to perform household duties such as cooking, cleaning and care work. Research confirms that women are also concentrated in the services sector including cleaning, hospitality, and retail, but are increasingly employed also in construction, mining,[1] and manufacturing and others. Further, women migrant workers play a critical role in business management and administration, and specific countries of origin also play a critical role in providing health and education workers.

As many of the Colombo Process countries make efforts in promoting the participation of women in the world of work through their national social and economic development planning, it is important to examine the situation of women migrant workers from these countries. In order to ensure women migrant workers are able to fully benefit from and contribute to win-win outcomes from safe, orderly and regular migration, it is critical to develop a clearer picture of the employment for women migrant workers from South Asia in the GCC more broadly. By doing so, countries of origin and destination will be able to work together to ensure skills development and recognition, as well as labour migration agreements, are designed to fully support women to participate in migration to ensure mutually beneficial economic development and growth across corridors.

Pakistan has seen significant increases in terms of overall numbers of migrant workers per year, with 774,795 workers for the year through to October 2015, compared to only 143,329 in 2005. Almost 96% of migrant workers in 2015 went to GCC countries, with more than half of all Pakistani workers migrating to Saudi Arabia alone. Among all Pakistani migrant workers going overseas from 2008 to 2013, only 0.12 per cent of which are women according to the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE). The low participation of Pakistani women migrant workers in the GCC labour market may be caused by decades of policy restrictions on migration which limits women’s labour migration as domestic workers to women 35 or older. Considerably, there are other Pakistani women migrant workers in the period who were employed in skilled or highly skilled occupations, with sales, childcare and clerking showing potential demand for trained Pakistani women workers in the GCC. As labour migration is one way of women’s economic empowerment, in order to promote women’s employment in a broader set of sectors of employment abroad, it is necessary to understand the current and future skills supply and demand that will directly inform policy making and programming on skills and qualifications recognition at national as well as regional levels. A gender Assessment of skills development opportunities in Pakistan is then needed. The aim of such analysis is to provide detailed information for policy planning for education and skills development in Pakistan and for employment in the GCC countries, mainly in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as the top destination countries hosting Pakistani women workers[2]. Both Pakistan and the target countries of destination will therefore benefit from improved labour migration governance and better skills matching. 

Objectives

GOALS is looking to contract an independent research consultant to collect quantitative and qualitative data to increase knowledge on skills development opportunities for women and analyses of the current and future skills supply and demand that will directly inform and contextualize the regional frameworks and guidelines on skills and qualifications recognition. The study will take into account existing skills development opportunities and the gender dynamics within occupational and skills categories. It will analyse the specific experiences of women migrant workers from Pakistan working in the GCC in different occupational sectors. The study will establish evidence to inform the development of inclusive and gender-responsive policy frameworks on skills development and labour migration which will lead to better achievements of women migrant workers from Pakistan in their labour migration to GCC countries.

More specifically, this study will provide an opportunity to:

1. Increase knowledge on specific issues experienced by women migrant workers from Pakistan participating in the GCC’s labour market;
2. Explore the existing skills and identifying skills gaps of targeted Pakistani women migrant workers;
3. Foster understanding on skills development and recognition opportunities, particularly for women migrant workers that will support the development and implementation of inclusive and gender-responsive labour migration policies;
4. Inform policy development and programme action and priorities that will make a significant contribution to promoting gender-equitable access to skills development opportunities leading to improved outcomes for all migrant workers.

Devoirs et responsabilités

1. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Under the technical supervision of the Regional Migration Programme Specialist in close consultation with Programme Management Specialist of UN Women Pakistan, the consultant will achieve the following objectives during the assignment :

1. Develop a study concept inclusive of a workplan with timeframe and a methodological note on research methodologies and data collection tools, both quantitative and qualitative analysis.
2. Collect data through surveys and field work to acquire qualitative inputs (e.g. through Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), in-depth qualitative interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs)) including with women migrant workers and key informants such as service providers, both governmental and non-governmental as necessary, ensuring diversity in terms of occupational sector, location, age group, and status;
3. Identify and analyse specific issues experienced by women migrant workers, particularly on
   1. the existing skills and skills gaps of Pakistani women migrant workers;
   2. What are existing skills development opportunities available for women workers in Pakistan and in targeted destination countries ? Are there any skills recognition schemes in place in both ends ? If so, in what sectors ?
   3. What are potential mechanisms and opportunities to practically enhance women migrant workers’ access to skills development and skills recognition in Pakistan and in targeted destination countries?
4. Based on the findings, draft and finalize the study (with minimum two rounds of comments), to the satisfaction of UN Women.
5. Facilitate a validation seminar with key stakeholders comprising representatives from government and non-government organizations as well as representative of migrant workers.
6. Incorporate comments and inputs received from the seminar to revise and finalise the report
7. Produce a research report in a compelling format, aiming at publishing the study in a public web portal.
8. Develop a communication strategy to disseminate the findings.

The consultant will be responsible for all aspects of the research required to produce the report, based on guidance from UN Women, and in consultation with other UN partner agencies ; ILO and IOM as relevant.

The consultant will propose methodologies and research participants as part of inception for the research. A mixed methodologies of qualitative and quantitative approaches is recommended.

1. DELIVERABLES AND TIMELINE

The assignment will take place between Feb 2022 and March 2022, anticipating 30 working days in total. The consultant is expected to produce the following deliverables:

All the documents, including the data collection tools and reports should be submitted in English language.

1. PAYMENT

Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of each deliverable and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed. Payments will not be based on the number of days worked but on the completion of each stated deliverable within the indicated timeframes.

Compétences

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PARTIES

UN Women will provide technical guidance and relevant documents where possible. The contractor shall be required to bear all the related costs and work independently to successfully achieve the end results.

The contractor will be responsible for following costs:

• Professional fee must be quoted in lumpsum amount per deliverable. The lumpsum amount must be detailed of how professional fee of each team member is calculated.
• Indirect costs such as printing, designing, stationeries, communications in relation to the scope of work of services must be included in the financial proposal.
• Travel costs for technical team members of contractors: all envisaged travel costs such as most direct and most economic international and local travel, living allowance, accommodation, terminal expenses etc. must be included in the financial proposal. If there are changes in travel plans that may lead to amendments of travel costs (including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses), the contractor should notify UN Women prior to the travel date. Based on approval provided by UN Women, the relevant contract amendment procedures shall apply.

Qualifications et expériences requises

QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CONSULTANT

• Master’s degree in gender studies, migration studies, international development studies, human rights, law, or other related field.
• At least 5 years of relevant experience with a demonstrable ability to undertake research and analytical reviews with a focus on one of the following fields: labour migration, skills development and recognition, and women’s empowerment.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skill is required; experience in and knowledge of design, layout and creative presentations a merit
• Good understanding of gender-responsive labour migration governance would be a plus
• Ability to work efficiently and responsively within a multicultural environment
• Ability to write and speak a local language of Pakistan would be an asset.