Consultancy: Action for paid Childcare sector Transformation Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Analysis

Position Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Duration of Contract: 18 Days

Reports To: Project Director – with technical assistance from the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Advisor

Application Deadline: 15 April 2024

Expected Start Date: 02 May 2024

BACKGROUND

World University Service of Canada (WUSC) is a leading Canadian international development organization focusing on three programmatic areas: Economic Opportunities, Education, and Empowerment. Our vision is a better world for all young people. It is a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable world in which all young people, especially women and refugees, are empowered to secure a good quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities.

WUSC currently works in over 25 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, with an annual budget of approximately CAD 50 million. Globally, we partner with a network of higher education institutions, civil society organizations, private sector partners, professionals, students, volunteers, faculty, and community leaders who help us achieve our mission.

ACTION FOR PAID CHILDCARE SECTOR TRANSFORMATION PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Action for Paid Childcare Sector Transformation (ACT) project is a 4-year collaborative initiative that uses an innovative systems approach to drive gender-transformative, locally-owned, collaborative action to transform paid childcare from a job of last resort to a vocation of choice and for the paid childcare sector to become one of economic prosperity for women in Kenya and Malawi. ACT aligns with Canada’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality and empowerment, SDG 8 on decent work for all, and Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) action area on growth that works for everyone.

ACT responds to recognition within the global policy agenda that women are overrepresented within the largely informal paid care economy, where they face low pay, poor working conditions, limited social protection, and rights abuses. These are key barriers that contribute to significant poverty among women-paid childcare providers, and that limit potential for their economic empowerment. The barriers also severely limit women-paid childcare providers’ ability to deliver quality childcare services. The urgency to address these barriers is amplified by a global care crisis in which women are disproportionately affected by a lack of quality childcare services (UNICEF, 2020).

Women are the primary participants in the paid childcare economies of Kenya and Malawi. This sector has a high economic opportunity for women due to the potential for sustainable demand for childcare services; however, this opportunity is unrealized. In Kenya, a study of a network of 7,000 childcare providers in Nairobi and Kisumu found that 92% of those childcare providers are women who earn an average of 10 USD per month, far below the estimated minimum wage level of 100 USD per month (Uthabiti Africa 2023), with many parents failing to pay for childcare services delivered. The Domestic Professionals Association of Kenya (DPAK) highlighted that women domestic childcare workers (nannies) have among the lowest-paid jobs in Kenya and cited frequent cases of abuse, including SGBV. In Malawi, consultations with the Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare (MoGCDSW) and childcare providers confirmed similarly high levels of representation of women in the childcare workforce, whose earnings are well below living wages, who face challenges receiving payment for services and work in poor and unsafe environments in which various forms of abuse including SGBV are common.

In both countries, the paid childcare sectors operate largely informally. Legal, policy and regulatory frameworks need to recognize childcare as a sector sufficiently. This limits the potential for governments and other stakeholders to implement and operationalize regulations and protections that address the needs of women-paid childcare providers, the children in their care, and their families. Insufficient investments in data and research on paid childcare amplify this issue. This means there is limited evidence on which to initiate or support policy and legislative changes that could help recognize, professionalize, and lead to greater dignity in this sector.

The largely informal nature of the sector, along with systemic gender biases, limit the financial service providers’ (FSPs) willingness to invest in women-led childcare enterprises. The sector also operates in the absence of training and certification standards. High costs and entry criteria also make training largely inaccessible, especially by the most marginalized women childcare providers. Training deficits limit the potential to deliver quality childcare services, reinforcing negative perceptions of childcare work and parents’ willingness to pay living wages or even honor payment agreements. High incidences of SGBV go largely unreported. Women childcare providers are challenged to recognize abuses, let alone access support. Harmful gendered social norms that paint childcare as a women’s domain underlie these challenges and hinder meaningful progress in addressing systemic inequalities.

The essence of ACT’s Theory of Change (ToC) is that the economic empowerment of women childcare providers in Kenya and Malawi can only be achieved if systemic, gender transformative change is driven and owned by local ecosystem actors. ACT’s systems approach tackles the most pressing underlying issues by working with key actors in Kenya and Malawi who influence those issues. ACT will enable coordination, knowledge, capacity, and performance improvements to address gender-based inequities. Geographically, ACT will focus on areas with large concentrations of women childcare providers, seeking opportunities to support rural and urban providers, including the most marginalized, and where project partners have existing networks, starting in Kenya. It will scale to Malawi following foundational mapping and relationship-building activities there.

The ACT project will be implemented in close collaboration between WUSC and partners in Kenya and Malawi, notably Uthabiti and the Coalition of Violence Against Women (COVAW) in Kenya and the Women’s Legal Resources Centre (WOLREC) in Malawi.

THE ASSIGNMENT

WUSC aims to hire a consultant to conduct a gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) analysis using secondary and primary data to inform program design and implementation with a focus on Kenya, which will be the country of operations in Year 1 of the program, before scaling up to Malawi in Year 2. Specific geographic focal areas include Nairobi, Kisumu, and Kakamega (with the latter as a key source county for childcare providers and the former two as important markets for childcare services) in Kenya. The GESI analysis aims to provide essential insights into gender-based and inclusive considerations needed to ensure that women, in particular, will benefit from the project interventions. The study should, therefore, seek to examine the root causes of cultural, gendered social norms and gender inequalities that are harmful to women’s access to higher quality, affordable, equitable, and inclusive childcare services, professional training opportunities, leadership and decision-making opportunities, and the constraints they face.

This 4-year gender transformative initiative includes the enhanced protection and promotion of women’s and girls’ rights and needs related to paid care work among its intended results. It works toward three of the “5-Rs of Care Work”: These are:

• Recognizing the value of unpaid and poorly paid care work
• Ensuring unpaid and paid care workers are represented and have a voice
• Responding to the rights and needs of all care workers

KEY AREAS OF INTERVENTION

The project’s ultimate outcome is Ultimate Outcome 1000: Enhanced economic empowerment of women-paid childcare providers in Kenya and Malawi.

The project will contribute to the ultimate outcome through the following three intermediate outcomes and associated immediate outcomes.

Intermediate Outcome 1100: Improved gender-responsive performance of childcare ecosystem actors in Kenya and Malawi

• Immediate Outcome 1110: Improved gender-responsive coordination among childcare ecosystem actors
• Immediate Outcome 1120: Improved capacity of ecosystem actors to develop and deliver training and certification supporting women’s advancement in the paid childcare sector

Intermediate Outcome 1200: Enhanced protection and promotion of the rights and needs of women-paid childcare providers in Kenya and Malawi

• Immediate Outcome 1210: Improved capacity of ecosystem actors to develop and implement gender transformative policy and regulation regarding the paid childcare sector.
• Immediate Outcome 1220: Improved capacity of ecosystem actors to champion and uphold the rights of women-paid childcare providers

Intermediate Outcome 1300: Enhanced provision of gender-responsive financial and business services and models by ecosystem actors to women-paid childcare providers in Kenya and Malawi.

• Immediate Outcome 1310: Improved capacity of ecosystem actors to provide gender-responsive business services and models that meet the needs of women-paid childcare providers
• Immediate Outcome 1320: Improved capacity of financial service providers to invest in women childcare providers while applying a gender lens

TARGET PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

The study proposes to consult project participants, ecosystem actors including partners, and stakeholders representing the public sector, including government officials, private sector micro-enterprises, home-based and center-based childcare owners, financial and business service providers, women’s rights organizations such as COVAW, INGOs, employers and decision-makers, community members (women, men, female and male youth, gender-diverse individuals) including parents, women-paid childcare providers in Nairobi and Kisumu Counties in Kenya and actors involved in the supply side (focally training institutions) in Kakamega. The study should aim to collect primary data through key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) with persons from diverse groups, including differently-abled persons and marginalized groups. Data should be disaggregated by gender, age, and other diversity factors where possible. Secondary data should be collected from relevant global, regional, and national reports addressing the care economy, focusing on paid care.

PURPOSE OF THE GESI ANALYSIS

The GESI Analysis aims to undertake a more extensive analysis utilizing both primary and secondary data from the specifically targeted locations to confirm and inform the design and delivery of the ACT project. It also aims to ensure that local women’s rights are co-led in the design of objectives and activities to ensure that feminist principles are applied. The findings from this analysis will enable WUSC and its local partners to effectively design and implement the initiative to equitably address the gender equality and human rights issues women-paid childcare providers face in a transformative, inclusive, and contextualized way, develop mitigation strategies for gender-specific risks, and aid in the formulation of a gender equality strategy for submission with the annual work plan. The findings will ensure proper and targeted capacity strengthening for staff and partners on gender analysis, gender mainstreaming, and monitoring of gender equality results throughout the project cycle.

THE GOALS OF THE GENDER EQUALITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION ANALYSIS

The gender equality and social inclusion analysis aims to accomplish the following goals;

• To understand how gender and inclusion dynamics affect or could affect the delivery of the project in Kenya.
• To understand how the ACT project impacts or could impact gender and inclusion dynamics in Kenya.
• To understand how the various groups will benefit from the ACT project in Kenya.

OBJECTIVES OF THE GENDER EQUALITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION ANALYSIS

The gender equality and social inclusion analysis will provide critical insights to inform the delivery of the ACT interventions, contributing to the achievement of the following objectives:

• Validate and refine the gender equality issues, gaps, inequalities, and barriers related to paid care work identified during the proposal phase and recent studies by program partners that impact women’s and men’s behavior regarding gender roles/relations/power dynamics, equitable access to and control over resources such as education, training, economic opportunities, leadership, and decision-making opportunities, GBV/SRHR, social, cultural and gendered norms, focusing on recommendations and best practices for addressing these issues.
• The intervention demonstrates an understanding of power dynamics in paid care work at the personal, organizational, or local level, how best to close the identified gender gaps, and how to consider the intersectional dimensions of inequality, discrimination, and exclusion.
• Recommendations and best practices for addressing human rights issues related to paid childcare work. Identify the existing human rights policies, international and national legal context, and frameworks from treaty bodies; types of human rights violations concerning paid care work and the root causes of violations; power relations and influence of key actors in the early childcare workspace in terms of labor rights, women’s rights, children’s rights and the rights of those cared for; primary responsibilities for violations at different levels; strengths and weaknesses of the affected individuals/groups/communities to address violations; and willingness and capacity of responsibility holders and duty bearers to address the problem.
• Validate and further refine gender-based constraints in paid care work and recommend key elements for ensuring that women and men, persons living with disabilities, and ethnic minorities will benefit from the project’s activities and intended outcomes.
• Validate the rights and well-being issues and barriers of those cared for (children’s rights) and how the quality of paid care services can be improved, in particular for children with disabilities.
• Identify opportunities for women’s economic empowerment and address barriers to women’s participation in leadership and decision-making roles, processes, and opportunities for unpaid care work building on proposal research and local partner knowledge.
• Analyze who has access to and control over resources, access to services, and decision-making and identify barriers to women’s access to those resources and services related to education and livelihood opportunities in the childcare space.
• Validate gender equality risks, vulnerabilities, negative, unintended consequences of the intervention, and mitigation strategies, including but not limited to sexual and Gender-based Violence and sexual exploitation and abuse, safeguarding issues in paid care work (see tool 7 in the FIAP toolkit for examples here).

GENDER ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK

The proposed GESI analysis framework is based on the WUSC GESI Analysis Guidance. These domains come from the USAID guidance on gender analysis and align with the FIAP (and GAC guidance on Gender-Based Analysis + (GBA+)), CARE’s gender analysis tool (which has previously been used by WUSC), and pulls from other GESI analysis best practices. For WUSC, in alignment with our Gender, Age, and Diversity policy, we aim to take an intersectional approach that includes gender, age, and diversity, recognizing that there are many intersecting identity factors such as race, ethnicity, and mental and physical disabilities.

• Laws, policies, regulations, and institutional practices
• Access to and control over resources and assets
• Gender roles, responsibilities, and time use
• Cultural norms, social norms, and beliefs
• Patterns of power and decision-making
• Services, institutions, and programs

The consultant will ensure that the gender analysis framework facilitates the gathering of evidence on the context (opportunities/constraints) for women and men’s access to quality, equitable, and inclusive education and training opportunities in paid care work. Constraints, for instance, can be those emanating from their own lives, their families (general entourage/relations who have some influence over women’s lives), or more structural barriers within the workforce that affect the opportunities of these women.

To facilitate this research process, a range of questions have been developed to guide the type of information the study should capture. These questions are only indicative; further refinement will be explored collaboratively with the consultant during the inception meeting. In collaboration with the WUSC team during the inception reporting phase. Findings should be aligned with the FIAP objectives and core action areas. The most critical point is that the study’s results provide relevant data that can inform the delivery of the ACT project, thereby helping to meet the objectives mentioned above.

METHODOLOGY

The proposed methodology should employ secondary data from global, regional, national, and local sources and primary data based on project participants. The Consultant will conduct key informant interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) with potential project participants (women, men, female, male youth, gender diverse individuals), partners, and stakeholders representing the public sector, including government officials, private sector micro-enterprises, childcare center owners, women’s rights organizations, INGOs, employers and decision-makers, community members, women-paid childcare providers, training providers, and financial institutions in the targeted areas in Kenya. WUSC staff will provide input and feedback on the preliminary findings, recommendations, and conclusions.

SPECIFIC TASKS

• Develop a detailed inception report and work plan in close consultation with designated WUSC staff, clarifying and refining the study’s approach, methodology, and timing.
• Refine the gender equality and social inclusion analysis guidelines and data collection tools as needed.
• Participate in an inception meeting with WUSC staff.
• Collect quantitative and qualitative data, including reviews of secondary information, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews.
• Prepare the final report as documented in the deliverables below, including actionable recommendations focusing on their relevance for interventions. The final report should also include a detailed bibliography of secondary research and a complete list of participants consulted.
• Revise the final report and recommendations following feedback from WUSC staff.

LEVEL OF EFFORT

The level of effort required for this consultancy is estimated at 18 days.

WUSC RESPONSIBILITIES

• To provide relevant documentation and respond to the Consultant’s questions throughout the mandate.
• To mobilize the necessary team to support the Consultant and designate a person responsible for this assignment at headquarters.
• To provide the Consultant with feedback and comments on the various documents produced, according to the approved writing plan.

TIMELINES AND DELIVERABLES OF THE CONSULTANCY

The contract period is for 18 days in May 2024. Estimated contributions expected in working days will be determined in consultation with the selected candidate. The candidate will have to put in place all the necessary actions to launch the GESI analysis within the following schedule:

a) Signing of Contract and Inception Meeting: 0.5 days, by 2 May 2024

b) Submission of a detailed work plan, draft inception report, and revised data collection tools (as necessary): 1 day, by 6 May 2024

c) Submission of the final version of the inception report, which incorporates WUSC comments: 0.5 days, by 7 May 2024

d) Data collection through desk review, key informant interviews & focus group discussions: 10 days, by 15 May 2024

e) Submission of the draft report, including methodology, findings, and recommendations. The report should also include:-

• A detailed bibliography of secondary research
• A complete list of participants consulted: 3 days, by 20 May 2024

f) Submission of the final report, including methodology, findings, recommendations, and conclusion, including WUSC comments: 2 days, by 24 May 2024

Total number of days: 18

CANDIDATE QUALIFICATIONS

• The candidate should have at least 5-7 years of professional experience and a demonstrated track record of conducting gender analysis for women’s economic empowerment projects.
• The candidate should hold a graduate degree in social sciences, gender studies, development studies, international development, or a related field.
• Strong research and report-writing skills are essential for this consultancy.
• Knowledge and understanding of international scholarship programs for development in developing countries.
• Knowledge and understanding of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy and Feminist International Assistance Gender Equality Toolkit for Projects
• Technical knowledge and experience related to paid and unpaid care work would be assets.