Technical Consultant- WeEmpower India (Local Post for Indian Nationals and Applicants with a Valid Work Permit)

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. UN Women’s Country Office, based in New Delhi, India, works to accelerate the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women through the strengthening of strategic partnerships, technical and policy advisory services and advocacy with governmental, inter-governmental and civil society partners. In addition, UN Women CO is also leading and coordinating the UN system’s work on gender equality, including through ensuring accountability for results.

Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is an essential element of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the roadmap to a more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable world. The Women’s Economic Empowerment Portfolio in India focusses on strengthening women’s economic rights and agency while creating an enabling environment for decent and safe employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for women in all their diversity. UN Women is implementing EU funded WeEmpower India project to advance women’s economic empowerment in India. By promoting decent and safe economic opportunities, policy advocacy, and collaborative efforts including towards addressing discriminatory social norms, the project aims to create positive change for women and girls in all their diversity. The project envisions following result areas:

1. Increased access to safe and decent economic opportunities for women and girls in all their diversity.
2. Enhanced gender transformative policies and decision- making processes to improve women’s access to safe and decent employment and entrepreneurship.
3. Positive gender norms that enable and increase women’s participation in economic and social life promoted.

Two critical area of work focus on:

• Enhancing the capacity of private sector companies to implement the UN’ Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) by promoting decent work opportunities for women and integrating a gender perspective in the business environment and practices.
• Providing technical advisory support/capacity building on gender statistics collection and analysis to better inform policies and programmes pertaining to women’s economic empowerment.

As part of the WeEmpower India, UN Women India seeks to engage a consultant to support the inception phase of the project to firm up concrete interventions and partnerships across three result areas mentioned above and develop detailed work plans in close consultation with key partners identified during the project development. The consultant will also support the finalization of the project log frame, Performance and Monitoring Framework (PMF), risk analysis and risk register as well as inception report to be submitted to the donor.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the direct guidance of Country Programme Manager, WEE, the consultant will undertake following activities:

1. Develop a three-year work plan for implementation of WeEmpower India based on the strategy/outcome/objective defined in the ProDoc:

• Formulate three-year work plan/activities during the inception phase of WeEmpower India.
• Identify key strategies and potential areas/activities for interventions across three result areas based on the overall direction provided by UN Women.
• Identify key stakeholders and partners (government, private and civil society organizations) towards implementation of activities across three result areas.
• Identify existing interventions across three result areas with potential of collaboration.
• Develop sets of key questions and methodology for collecting required information during the inception phase.
• Organize consultations/workshops/meetings with key stakeholders, with logistical support from UN Women and document the outcome of the consultations (reports of consultations) to feed into the work plan, including specific areas of collaboration with relevant UN agencies.
• Any other related tasks to complete the three-year work plan.

2. Develop the Performance Monitoring Framework (PMF) in close consultation with key stakeholders:

• Based on the consultations with key targeted partners, draft the initial PMF that meets the requirements of UN Women and EU, including key milestones/baseline/targets and means of verification, collection method (with indicative timeframe/frequency) risks and assumptions and risk mitigation strategy.
• Based on the feedback from UN Women, revise the initial draft PMF as necessary.
• Any other related tasks to complete the PMF.

3. Advise on the governance mechanism, scale up and sustainability strategy for the project:

• Advise on the constitution and roles and responsibilities of project steering and/or advisory committee comprising of government, civil society and private sector.
• Guide and develop scale up and sustainability strategy/plan of the project.

Deliverables:

• Inception Report outlining timeline, methodology and approach to develop detailed work plan during the inception phase developed and approved by UN Women – 10th August 2024 – 10%.
• Draft three-year consolidated work plan for WeEmpower India including key strategies, activities, partners and modality for engagement/partnerships developed – 30th September 2024 – 40%
• Finalised three-year consolidated work plan for WeEmpower India including key strategies, activities, stakeholders/ partners as well as modality for engagement/partnerships based on inputs from UN Women and approved by UN Women. 10th October 2024
• Performance and Monitoring Framework with project risk analysis and risk register finalized with inputs from UN Women – 15th October 2024 – 10%
• Draft report outlining key results during the inception phase of project to be submitted to the EU, including three-year work plan, PMF, risk register, scale up and sustainability strategy/plan – 30th October 2024 – 20%
• Final report outlining key results during the inception phase of project to be submitted to the EU, including three-year work plan, PMF, risk register, scale up and sustainability strategy approved by UN Women/Donor – 10th November 2024 – 20%

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

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Gender and Development Studies, or any Social Sciences or a related field.
• 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:

• At least 7 years of progressively responsible experience in programme development and implementation including monitoring and evaluation Plan/Framework with strong technical expertise on women’s economic empowerment is required
• Sound knowledge and expertise on promoting women’s employment entrepreneurship at small and medium enterprises level focussed on women’s access to finance and markets.
• Experience of working with private sector on gender mainstreaming is desirable
• Knowledge and experience around gender disaggregated data and analysis is desirable
• Good communication skills and the ability to explain technical terms in a non-technical language
• Experience of working in the similar assignments is preferable
• Experience of working with UN agencies, international organization is desirable.

Language Requirements:

• Strong written skills in English and good command over Hindi.

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org.

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) 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. 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).
• Minimum Experience relevant to the assignment (10 points)
• Relevant experience in promoting women’s employment and entrepreneurship (5 points).

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

• Interview (80 points)
• Writing Samples (20 points)

Please Note:

• All consultants are required to undertake full medical examination and a statement of fitness is to be submitted 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.
• Travel and DSA will be booked and settled as per SSA norms directly by UN Women on submission of F-10 form with original ticket stubs, vouchers, etc. as per actuals.

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.