Antecedentes

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

A key area of concern for UN Women is women’s economic empowerment as expressed in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2018-2021 as well as in the targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 for gender equality and women’s empowerment and of several other SDGs relating to inclusive growth, decent work, ending poverty, and reducing inequality, and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.

The WeEmpowerAsia programme

The WeEmpowerAsia (WEA) programme is a collaborative effort between the Regional Office of UN Women for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) and the European Union (EU), which is funding the action under its Partnership Instrument. With this programme the two entities will leverage their joint commitment to enhance women’s economic empowerment globally. They each have longstanding experience and partnerships in the Asian region. UN Women will apply its triple mandate of normative, operational and coordination actions and use its convening power to bring multiple stakeholders together for effective collaboration. EU brings valuable private and public sector partnerships across sectors as well as its solid expertise in trade and economic development.

The overall objective of the WEA programme is that more women lead, participate and have access to enhanced business opportunities and leadership within the private sector to advance sustainable and inclusive growth. The programme will achieve this through three complementary outcome areas to be implemented in seven selected middle-income countries (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) in Asia:

• ADVOCACY: Women’s networks, public institutions, and the private sector will collaborate and share expertise and knowledge to build an enabling business environment for women’s economic empowerment in the workplace and in the marketplace,
• ENTREPRENEURSHIP: The capacity of women-owned businesses and women entrepreneurs will be developed to enable them to engage with government and private sector corporations in policy development and dialogues for advancing women’s economic empowerment, and
• BUSINESS ENGAGEMENT: The private sector will be supported to implement gender-sensitive practices and culture within their businesses through the take-up of the Women Empowerment Principles (the WEPs – a set of guiding principles to achieve gender equality within companies).

Ultimately, the programme will contribute to the achievement of gender equality through enabling women’s increased participation in the labour force and in the market place, improved opportunities for women entrepreneurship and business start-ups, and through strengthening of corporate sector’s commitment and action to ensure gender equality in business culture and practices. 

The guiding platform for the programme is the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a set of seven principles for businesses offering guidance on how to strengthen gender equality in the workplace, in the marketplace and in the community. The WEPs are jointly developed by UN Women and UN Global Compact and seeking the commitments and concrete implementation by private corporations around the globe.

The UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific is seeking an international consultant with expertise in Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) to provide broad support to the WeEmpower Asia programme. The WEE Specialist will be providing strategic technical support and guidance to programme design, programme implementation, and related knowledge products. The WEE Specialist will also support efforts to build strong partnership with key stakeholders while enhancing knowledge management and capacity development.

Deberes y responsabilidades

II. Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the Regional Programme Manager, the consultant will undertake the following tasks:

Provide technical advice and guidance on research and knowledge products

• Gender-Responsive Procurement: Support to and oversight of Gender-responsive procurement consultations with contractor, inputs to review process (including existing WEA and UN Women documentation, commenting on review drafts and elements), establish linkages between contractor and country level actors (through WEA and UNW CO teams)
• ASEAN Policy Review for Private Sector Reporting: Technical Review of Regional Policy landscaping with Value4Women and crafting the ASEAN Engagement Process and develop Guidance for local teams to engage their governments
• Gender-Smart Investment: Providing technical input in newly established work around gender-smart investment and support the set-up of an advisory group in Asia to progress this work and provide recommendations/ drafts to conduct complementary research and support managing the partnership with iix-Fund, Gobi Partners and potentially others. The envisioned outcome is aligned gender-smart investment criteria in Asia.
• Research, develop and present analytical reports, research papers, briefing notes, background papers, summaries, correspondence, and knowledge products on women´s economic empowerment
• Any other related tasks requiring expert technical input

Build partnerships and support in developing resource mobilization strategies

• Support UN Women’s coordination and collaboration efforts with other actors working on gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, such as ADB, ILO etc. and private sector development and facilitate regular coordination meetings and events conducted. Collaborate strongly with UN Women’s partnership and resource mobilization team
• Identify opportunities and develop concept notes and donor proposals to support resource mobilization for the regional WEE portfolio (min. 2-3 proposals). This will include areas, such as Unpaid Care Work, Gender-Responsive Procurement and other core areas currently identified

Support uptake and implementation of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs)

• WEPs Awards: Conduct shortlisting of regional applications to the UN Women 2020 Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards by reviewing and scoring submissions of specific WEPs-aligned initiatives
• WEPs Trainings: Provide technical advice to development of WEPs trainings materials for the private sector, including overseeing consultations with contractors, reviewing, and commenting on drafts and elements of materials, sharing of existing materials and lessons learned
• WEPs Reporting: Support to develop a plan to mobilize policy makers and private sector to start reporting on a newly developed reporting framework for the WEPs
• Work with the M&E manager to support development and roll out of online surveys for WEPs signatories on the progress of WEPs implementation and impact on their performance, based on specific indicators and targets, such as women’s leadership and impact of companies’ performance, women and men’s equal access to professional development opportunities, protection in the workplace etc. to prepare relevant analyses and inform the WEPs interventions in WEA countries and the impact on corporates.
• WEPs Business Model: Co-design with the WEA program manager(s) a sustainable business model on how to implement the WEPs through a monetized offering/ cost recovery model and portfolio for private sector companies. This will include a partnership strategy and business model design in collaboration with our WEPs partners in the different countries

Develop strategic priorities and design for WEE programming

• Evaluate the conducted UN Women internal regional desk review of WEE activities, conduct a gap and opportunity analysis to develop strategic priorities for programming within the context of WEA’s outcomes and the wider new strategic note for WEE in Asia

Others

• Support in development of annual workplans and the development of the new Strategic Note for WEE in Asia Pacific
• Contribute to donor reporting of WEA

III.Expected Deliverables

*Payment will be made upon submission of deliverables with an approval of the Regional Programme Manager

Competencias

IV.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

V.Contract period and work location

The contract period will be approximately 13 months and the consultant will begin the contract remotely, based in their current location, preferably in Asia to ensure better collaboration with the entire team. If the situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic allows, the consultant will be expected to relocate to Bangkok, Thailand and work at the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific as required. Round trip airfare from consultant original country to Bangkok, Thailand will be financially covered by UN Women if the situation allows.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

VI. Required qualification

Education:

• Master’s degree in economics, international development, law, social science or related field with minimum 10 years of relevant professional work experience in programme development and implementation including monitoring and evaluation activities, with strong technical expertise in women’s economic empowerment required (at least 5 years at the international level).

* Bachelor’s degree with relevant combination of academic qualifications and at least 12 years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of the master’s degree.

Experience:

• Strong track record in project/programme management for the UN or international organizations
• Very strong technical expertise and work experience on women’s economic empowerment in a wide set of areas ranging from i.e. unpaid care work, women’s entrepreneurship, gender-responsive budgeting/procurement etc.
• Experience and affinity working with the private sector including working with women-owned business and larger companies and solid understanding of gender-related workplace policies
• Strong experience in advocacy and policy influencing processes preferably in an Asia-Pacific context
• Min. 3 years Asia-Pacific work experience is required
• Knowledge of results-based management (RBM) and the application of RBM principles in programme formulation
• Previous experience with UN Women is an advantage
• Experience in partnership building with the private sector and/or engaging the private sector for development is an advantage
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and strong proposal writing skills
• Ability to work efficiently and responsively within a multicultural environment
• Strong commitment to gender equality, human rights and respect for diversity

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in oral and written English is required.
• Excellent technical and analytical writing skills (to be assessed through writing sample)

VII.Evaluation

Applications will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis.

• Technical Qualification (100 points) weight; [70%]
• Financial Proposal (100 points) weight; [30%]

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the applications, with evaluation of the technical application being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated.

Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically qualified candidates who may be contacted for validation interview.

Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

• Only the financial proposal of candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation will be considered and evaluated.
• The total number of points allocated for the price component is 100.
• The maximum number of points will be allotted to the lowest price proposal that is opened/ evaluated and compared among those technical qualified candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation. All other price proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.

VIII.Submission of application

Interest candidates are encouraged to submit electronic application to UNDP Website.

Or send application email to Nutnita.limpanonda@unwomen.org , not later than 21 September 2020 COB (Bangkok time).

Submission package includes:

• Personal History Form (P11) which can be downloaded http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs;
• Updated CV
• Two WEE-related writing samples (max. 5,000 words each)
• Financial proposal

IX. Payments

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.