Historique

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (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, humanitarian action, human rights and peace and security.  UN Women provides support to Member States’ efforts and priorities in meeting their gender equality goals and for building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

One of UN Women’s key programme areas worldwide and in the country of Georgia is women’s economic empowerment. Currently, with the support of the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, UN Women is implementing the 3-year project “A Joint Action for Women’s Economic Empowerment in Georgia” (JAWE).  With the overall goal that women, particularly the poorest and most excluded, are economically empowered and benefit from development in Georgia, the project seeks to strengthen the private sector’s engagement in women’s economic empowerment. In the project, UN Women disseminates information about gender equality and the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs; For more information on the WEPs, see https://www.empowerwomen.org/en/weps/about) to companies and supports them to design and implement action plans for women’s empowerment. Also, UN Women provides trainings, relevant tools and technical advice to companies, including on mentoring.

Workplace mentoring programmes are becoming a popular tool to develop employees’ skills and increase inclusion at work. Mentoring programmes show commitment of employers on their employees’ development and well-being, can contribute to the development of a better-trained and engaged workforce and increase employees’ job satisfaction. Mentoring has been also found to be one the most impactful activity for increasing diversity at work, compared to a variety of other diversity initiatives. In male dominated industries, pairing senior male mentors with female mentees proved to lead to career progress satisfaction for women[1], as well as to a greater job satisfaction for both, mentors and mentees (hosh, R. & Reio, T.G. (2013). Career benefits associated with mentoring for mentors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 83, 106-116.).

Despite the increasing popularity of workplace mentoring programmes in many countries, mentoring is a new concept in Georgia. At the end of 2018, in collaboration with an NGO partner from Georgia, UN Women started supporting selected private sector companies to increase their understanding of mentoring and to establish workplace mentoring programmes for women’s empowerment. The support has involved trainings and gatherings for the companies’ human resources personnel and selected mentor-mentee pairs at the companies.

Meanwhile, and informed by the trainings and the received feedback, UN Women is also producing a gender-sensitive handbook for companies on establishing mentoring programmes for women’s empowerment. The handbook will be disseminated to a wider private sector audience in 2019. Instead of being prescriptive, the handbook introduces why mentoring programmes are good for women’s empowerment at the workplace and guides companies to design, implement and evaluate mentoring programmes that best suit their own context. The handbook also includes information on gender issues that companies should be aware of and take into consideration when they design mentoring programmes.

The draft handbook (about 70 pages in Calibri 12 and annexes in English) produced by the Georgian NGO partner is already ready. The final handbook is expected to be at least 50 pages, excluding the annexes. The target audience of the handbook is companies’ human resources and other personnel responsible for employees’ capacity development.

Now, UN Women Georgia office seeks to hire an international consultant to support the finalization of the handbook. The consultant will work on the existing draft handbook, do substantive editing and ensure that the handbook’s guidance is informed by relevant international good practices, including on consideration of gender issues mentoring programmes. Also, the consultant will support UN Women in addressing comments from a Reference Group that will include representatives of UN Women headquarters/other offices and private sector companies.

The objective of the consultancy assignment is to finalize the handbook for establishing workplace mentoring programmes for women’s empowerment.

Devoirs et responsabilités

The duties and responsibilities of the International Consultant are:

• To do substantive editing of the handbook to ensure its clear, informative and aligned with relevant good international practices in mentoring. The editing may include adding relevant information and guidance;
• To further develop the handbook’s existing information and as relevant, add new information on gender issues vis-à-vis mentoring (e.g. why mentoring programmes are good for women’s empowerment; potential benefits/challenges of same-sex and cross-check mentoring relationships; how to encourage male employees to become mentors for women etc.);
• Liaise, as necessary, with the authors of the draft to ensure that the original inputs have been adequately reflected in the final version of the handbook; and
• To address Reference Group’s comments on the handbook and finalize it.

Deliverables:

• Based on the initial read-through of the draft handbook, a workplan for how the handbook will be revised submitted (1 working day) - by July 3, 2019;
• Revised handbook submitted in English (5 working days) - by July 19, 2019;
• Finalized handbook in English, incorporating comments from the Reference Group and UN Women (3 working days) - by August 30, 2019.

Compétences

Qualifications et expériences requises