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 and diverse genders as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

All human development and human rights issues involve gender dimensions. UN Women globally focuses on key priority areas that are fundamental to women’s equality, and that can unlock progress across the board. UN Women’s priority areas include increasing women’s leadership and participation in political spaces, ending violence against women, enhancing women’s economic empowerment, engaging in all aspects of women peace and security processes, making gender equality central to national planning and budgeting through Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) and advancing gender in intergovernmental processes.

UN Women’s work on GRB involves ensuring that national planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation processes incorporate a gender perspective. UN Women’s GRB programmes at the regional and country level have made significant contribution towards this by strengthening political support, developing technical resources and capacities, generating good practices for improving women's access to services and increasing accountability for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE).  At the forefront of global, regional and local advocacy for application of GRB, UN Women has built partnerships with diverse government, inter-governmental and non-governmental partners to further efforts and demonstrate GRB’s relevance to sustainable development, aid effectiveness, public sector reform and financing for development.

UN Women’s India Country Office based in New Delhi, India, is currently implementing a project with the objective of identifying strategies and operational approaches to strengthen on-going efforts in the area of GRB. Insights generated from this project will enable key stakeholders at the national and regional level to accelerate their efforts to ensure that women’s priorities are adequately reflected in national budgeting processes, and to make concrete changes for adequate resource allocation towards women’s priorities.

Taking this forward, technical assistance is being provided to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India to strengthen GRB initiatives at the central level with select Ministries/Departments and in 6 states. The technical assistance is for institutionalizing GRB in key sectors through establishing relevant gender responsive policy tools for the larger impact of having inclusive and gender sensitive programmes, schemes and budgets in central Ministries/Departments. Leveraging on the institutional capacity, past work and established networks and partnerships, UN Women through this programme will create an enabling environment by building capacities of key stakeholders to address gender issues and be instrumental in making the planning and budgeting process in the Government gender responsive.

Within this context, UN Women seeks the services of GRB Sector Expert for undertaking gender budget analysis of select central Ministries/Departments of ‘Science and Technology’ sector at the national level. The analysis will aim to generate/strengthen evidence on the existing gender gaps in policy/programme design, and implementation, budgetary allocations and expenditure on women, and recommendations to strengthen gender budgeting.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall supervision of Programme Lead- GRB, UN Women, the Sector Expert will lead the gender budget (GB) analysis of their respective sectors to strengthen gender budgeting for the financial year 2024-25. They will be required to undertake the following tasks-

• Review and strengthen the preliminary GB analysis of schemes and programmes of 5-6 central ministries/departments falling under the ambit of the Science and Technology sector;
• Undertake a thorough desk review, analysis of the existing data, link GBS to outcome budgets, wherever required and providing concrete recommendations to ensure that policies and programmes respond to the specific concerns of women and girls;
• Provide advisory guidance to the UN Women’s GRB Project Management Unit at MWCD on strengthening GB Analysis of the respective sector at the national level during the budget preparation phase for financial year 2024-25;
• Provide guidance to the PMU team and the nodal officials at the MWCD to ensure standards of quality of the analysis, within the given time specifications;
• Provide guidance to the UN Women’s GRB team on the Orientation/ Capacity Building Initiative scheduled for the select officials of Central ministry/ departments. Conduct training sessions, as required;
• Provide regular update and reports to UN Women.

Key Deliverables:

• Review the preliminary GB Analysis of schemes and programme of central ministries/departments - 30 November 2023 (25% Payment)
• Refine the preliminary GB Analysis with recommendations to strengthen GB in their respective sector - 30 December 2023 (50% Payment)
• Guide and lead the recommendation round of discussions with select ministries/departments to strengthen GB in their respective ministry/departments - 31 January 2024 (25% Payment)

Inputs:

• UN Women will provide the Experts with background materials relevant to the assignment.
• The Experts are expected to use their own computer for the work.
• The Experts are expected to use their research assistants/personal assistants for their data assimilation/report writing work.
• UN Women will cover costs of translation of materials.
• UN Women will cover travel expenses upon prior approval.

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;
• Sound understanding of development issues and gender;
• Adheres to deadlines and follows up on time-bound issues;
• Maintains diplomacy, tact and strict confidentiality with internal and external partners and clients.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s Degree or equivalent in Social Sciences/ Social Work /Gender Studies/Public Administration/Policy or related fields.
• PhD in related subjects will be an added advantage

Experience:

• Minimum 10 years of experience at the national/state level working with development projects including hands-on experience of design, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of projects preferably on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights;
• Experience on financial/budgetary data analysis, statistics and quantitative and qualitative research is required;
• Experience of working with national/ state governments; particularly on GRB is highly desirable.

Language:

• Proficiency in English; good command over Hindi in reading and writing.

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org. Female web designers are encouraged to apply.

Application:

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) and their work portfolio which can be downloaded http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs.
• Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document along with the work portfolio. 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).
• Expertise and Experience relevant to the assignment (10 points) based on portfolio provided.
• Demonstrable experience of working on gender issues (GRB) (5 points).

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

1.Review of Publications (50 Points)

2.Thematic knowledge (Science and Technology) Expertise (50 Points)

Please Note:

• For an assignment requiring travel, consultants of 65 years or more require full medical examination and statement of fitness to work to engage in the consultancy.
• Due to large number of potential applicants, only competitively selected candidates will be contacted for remaining steps of the service procurement 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.