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.

Women’s Economic Empowerment and Migration at UN Women in Asia and the Pacific

UN Women in the Asia-Pacific region addresses these challenges through a comprehensive approach to Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and Migration, which includes initiatives ranging from social protection and unpaid care to SME/private sector development. Recognizing the significance of WEE, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, UN Women’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) has been actively developing strategic approaches aligned with the region’s specific contexts and needs, aiming to promote gender equality and economic inclusion across diverse settings. This strategic focus is informed by rigorous evaluations, consultations, and alignment with the recently launched Global UN Women Women’s Economic Empowerment Strategy, ensuring effective support for women’s economic empowerment in the region spanning across the following areas: Women and the World of Work, Transforming Care Systems, Gender-responsive Climate Action and Green/Blue Economies, and Migration.

The regional office is currently implementing a series of different projects: WeRise Together, MOGEF, GICEEP, UN Women WEPs Asia-Pacific Gender Action Lab (GAL) – Innovation for Impact, and Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards and WEPs Forum.

In addition, the WEE Team is running a series of advocacy campaigns in the related areas, such as, but not limited to:

• #BuyForEqual – aiming to prompt procurement professionals to evaluate and select suppliers who uphold gender equality principles, while urging consumers to patronize businesses supporting women’s initiatives. The campaign seeks to achieve three main objectives:

1. Educate on the impact of gender-inclusive procurement practices.
2. Encourage procurement officers to consider gender equality in decision-making.
3. Motivate consumers to support businesses that champion gender equality

• The Global Alliance for Care (GAC) is the first global multi-stakeholder community that facilitates and fosters spaces for collective action, advocacy, communication, and learning about care, its recognition as a need, as work, and as a right

The WEE unit has also been launching many thought leadership knowledge products around signature events in the region. This year, the WEE Unit is planning to launch in Q4 2 knowledge product requiring strong communications support in designing and publicizing.

With a focus on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), this position will encompass diverse communication needs, acting as a central point of contact for regional communications. The consultant will collaborate closely with our Regional Offices (RO) and Headquarters (HQ), ensuring alignment with corporate guidelines while maintaining quality assurance across all communication outputs. This role is essential in enhancing our communication strategies and fostering impactful engagement both internally and externally. Especially, in the area of Women’s Economic Empowerment we are working across a very diverse stakeholder base including governments, CSOs, entrepreneurs and a large part of the work includes working with the private sector and fostering strategic partnerships in the thematic area of Women’s economic empowerment. However, this can also include leveraging the relationships with the private sector to strengthen the unit’s communication. An example of such a transformational partnership is for example the Unstereotype Alliance.

We are seeking a highly experienced communications and advocacy professional ideally with experience in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment with experience and/or interest to create partnerships for impact. We are seeking for a very organized and strategic communications professional with the ability to develop and plan a strong and efficient communications plan to meet the different needs.

The selected candidate will need to be able to work across the spectrum from strategic communications thinking to leading the direct design and implementation of campaigns. The person will need to have a very ‘hands-on’ and practical mindset paired with practical skills to take on for example, small design work (i.e. designing social media posts, power point presentations).

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision and guidance of the Regional Programme Manager, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Migration, the consultant will undertake the following tasks:

• Oversee WEE Communications Strategy implementation, Strategic Programmatic Communication and Programme(s) Design and branding??
  • Development and implement overall WEE Communications Strategy, as well as specific programme/project communication strategies
  • In collaboration with international partners and UN Women HQ develop impactful communications and branding strategies and materials for WEE programmes, covering print, digital, and video assets, to boost visibility and recognition, ensuring alignment across initiatives.
  • Provide support in creating project-specific communication materials, ensuring adherence to branding guidelines and donor requirements, and refining materials for consistent messaging.
  • Design, update, and implement a comprehensive 12-month communication plan for the unit, encompassing various areas of work and align this with the overall ROAP Communications Plan
  • Coordinate efforts to enhance media presence, encompassing newspaper placements, ensuring alignment with thematic objectives, and identifying suitable media outlets for insightful pieces in relevant regions. Additionally, report on and analyze communication results to inform strategy enhancements, including tracking WEE-related trends for more targeted approaches.
• Coordination with Country Offices to ensure a consistent and cohesive WEE communication across the region including joint campaigning, impactful story-telling?
  • Implement quarterly campaigns for increased visibility of WEE Unit programs, coordinating with Country Offices at the regional level.
  • Utilize the regional Community of Practice (CoP) to gather content for quarterly newsletters, aligning with thematic focuses.
  • Collect and curate human-interest stories, case studies, photos, and videos from Country Offices for internal and external newsletters.
  • Facilitate cross-learning sessions for Country Offices on communication best practices and WEE branding alignment.
  • Conduct interviews to create compelling stories for digital channels and the Women Entrepreneur Hub, potentially involving travel to Country Offices.
  • Compile regional case studies for donor visibility, develop new storytelling formats, and plan social media dissemination strategies, including training sessions for Country Office colleagues
• Partnerships and Communication with internal and external key stakeholders and shape new potential partnerships?
  • Develop strategy to support thought leadership of the WEE unit inclusive the WEE leadership team inclusive of i.e. creating media opportunities for UN Women leadership around WEE in Asia Pacific.
  • Support key donor funded projects and ensure high level leadership for the relevant partners.
  • Develop and support the team to develop new communications related partnerships for the WEE Unit. (For example, media agencies, or in-kind support of organizations specialized on advocacy or story-telling and develop content to support programme beneficiaries etc.)
  • Support the team to engage with potential partners (foundations, private sectors) to develop new programmatic and funding opportunities, including support on due diligence, proposal writing and partnership management.
• Communications to support Knowledge Products and Knowledge Management & Reporting?
  • Collaborate with the Women’s Economic Empowerment M&E Consultant to ensure accurate and efficient communications reporting including but not limited to: quarterly communications and visibility reports, communications donor reports (i.e. data, design and copy-editing of internal evaluation reports and annual reports)
  • Working with UN Women’s ROAP Team, Headquarters and Country Offices to ensure that communications reporting meets the quality standards set by the unit regionally, globally and at country office level.
  • Monitor the communication results and indicators of each programme in the WEE unit (this includes also online analytics of digital campaigns and hygiene posting)
  • Support the design, copy-editing, and communications plan of newly produced knowledge products
• Develop and implement a strategic web presence combining different existing and creation of new web/microsites
  • Develop a cohesive web strategy in strong collaboration with RO comms unit and HQ to ensure that all ROAP WEE programmes have a strong presence, which will include developing an approach on how different webpages and/or programmes are linked to each other.
  • Establish and maintain the Entrepreneurship Hub as a central platform showcasing upcoming opportunities for entrepreneurs to engage with UN Women’s regional and country-level programs. Regular updates should feature stories from entrepreneurs aligned with regional and Country Office initiatives.
  • Designing, developing, and maintaining the webpage for the ‘UN Women WEPs Asia-Pacific Gender Action Lab (GAL)’. This includes collaborating with stakeholders to gather relevant content, organizing and structuring the webpage effectively, ensuring user-friendly design and accessibility, regularly updating with latest news and resources, and providing technical support for optimal functionality
• Developing a quarterly newsletter
  • Creating a quarterly external newsletter for potential stakeholders, donors, entrepreneurs, government entities and other relevant stakeholders to highlight the work done by WEE unit at the regional level and in country offices, in line with the thematic focus in that quarter.
  • Collecting data for the newsletter over the quarter and getting feedback from the Regional Manager on the content throughout the collection process.
  • Aligning the communications efforts in the country offices with the Regional thematic focus areas for that quarter to best inform the newsletter.
• Managing and Coordination
  • Working with media agencies to best deliver on campaigns and events in line with UN Women, Women’s Economic Empowerment, and donor brand guidelines.
  • Working with UN Women Long Term Agreement (LTA) vendors and consulting designers, branding strategists and copy editors to deliver knowledge products in line with internal branding guidelines and ensure quality delivery.
  • Working with translators in different countries to create compelling stories for UN Women ROAP’s media channels.
• Support on the Execution and Visibility of Women’s Economic Empowerment Events?
  • Manage Communications aspects of event management, including but not limited to set-up event pages and webinar links, ensure technical coordination and livestreaming of major events, compile post-event attendance reports.
  • Develop event communications materials, i.e. event slides and polls, and coordinate with speakers to collect headshots and biographies.
  • Liaise with Country Office teams to support and coordinate high-quality country-level events and ceremonies. Support event conceptualization, design, and communications strategy, including coordination with event organizing agency, for 2024/25 events including the Feminist Finance Forum (May), Asia-Pacific Care Forum (August), Business and Human Rights Forum, Global Summit for the Future (Sep) 2024 Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards Regional Ceremony (Nov). In addition to developing social media assets for regional channels and country offices for international days of relevance like, Migrants Day, International Day of Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) Day and International Day of Care and Support.

Expected Deliverables

Provide Monthly Status report with packaged materials on ongoing tasks in the following areas:

• Communications, outreach, and advocacy strategies and implementation
• Strategic and programme communication and branding, including the design and launch of publications
• Communications and visibility reporting (monthly reports, RMS inputs, and annual reports)
• Support provided to and campaigns developed around Women’s Economic Empowerment events and advocacy moments
• Communication materials developed and copy-edited
• Partnerships and Events related progress

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

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:

https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:

• Strong judgement in reputational risk and demonstrated experience in crisis communications.
• Proven ability to shape, develop, implement and optimize social media moderation strategies for an international organization that can be customized for a wide range of channels.
• Experience managing digital communication channels (especially social media channels) is needed.
• Understanding of current trends and best practices in digital communication, social media engagement and best in class digital and social media platforms in both developing and developed regions.
• An organized and agile team player with high attention to detail and ability to prioritize tasks.
• Comfortable working independently with flexible hours and managing one’s own time and responsibilities

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in digital communications, educational technology, journalism, public relations, or related fields.
• 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:

• Minimum of 2 (two) years professional experience in the field of strategic communications, advocacy and online communications, web publishing, electronic networks, or related fields
• Knowledge and expertise in UN Women’s mandate areas a distinct advantage.
• Working experience with the UN is an advantage.
• Experience working in a multicultural, web-based environment, and graphic design.
• Experience in online applications development and management

Languages and writing skills:

• Strong proficiency in English. Other UN languages are an asset.
• Excellent English language writing and editing skills
• Excellent communication and advocacy skills.