UN Women: Regional Evaluation Specialist

Background

The 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 center 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.

The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN Women with its enhanced role at country, regional and global levels. The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work.

The Independent Evaluation and Audit Services (IEAS), provides independent evaluation and internal audit assurance, as well as advisory services, to management on UN Women’s programmes, controls, business systems, and processes to identify good practices, provide recommendations for improvement, and contribute to learning. The  governs the mandate, responsibilities, and activities of the IEAS.

IEAS is supported by two services; the  and the :

• Independent evaluation at UN Women is defined as a systematic and impartial assessment that provides credible and reliable evidence-based information for understanding the extent to which an intervention has achieved or made progress (or lack thereof) towards intended and unintended results on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
• Internal audit is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations, governance, risk management and internal control.

Reporting directly to the Chief of the Independent Evaluation Service (IES), the Regional Evaluation Specialist will independently support decentralized evaluations at regional and country level by strengthening decentralized evaluation systems,  conducting and managing regional and country portfolio evaluations, ensuring use of evaluation findings and recommendations, providing internal and external evaluation capacity development and promoting coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive at regional and country levels.

Duties and Responsibilities

Undertake/manage evaluations and strengthen decentralized evaluation systems at regional and country levels in the Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean:

• Undertake/manage evaluations in the region, including regional and country portfolio evaluations, promote stakeholder’s ownership and learning, align with country evaluation systems and partners’ participation;
• Provide sound methodological advice and quality assurance to decentralized evaluation processes, including the preparation of Terms of References (TORs), evaluation study, final evaluation report and dissemination strategy;
• Provide technical support to the planning, monitoring and implementation of evaluation plans in UN Women’s regional and country offices;
• Substantially contribute to the development of methodologies for regional and country evaluations, and to the review of guidelines, systems, procedures and tools related to decentralized evaluations;
• Coordinate with the Regional Planning and Coordination Specialist to ensure the alignment of evaluation with Results Based Management systems of the Regional Offices and country offices;
• Contribute to corporate level evaluation processes led by the IES and ensure alignment to corporate evaluation systems.

Promote the use of evaluations and ensure that evaluation findings and recommendations are implemented:

• Prepare aggregate analysis and qualitative assessments of decentralized evaluations to input to Evaluation Annual report and management briefs;
• Organize meetings, workshops and other discussion fora to establish a dialogue on evaluation results and the evaluative knowledge management at regional level;
• Ensure that evaluation results are taken into account for the continued implementation of strategies, programmes/projects and for the design and appraisal of new projects/ programmes;
• Ensure that project/programme managers respond to recommendations and monitor the follow up on evaluations. 

Strengthen evaluation capacity development in UN Women at regional and country levels:

• Provide training and coaching on evaluation, self-evaluation, UN Women evaluation policy and guidelines, monitoring and results-based management within the Regional Office and country offices, including substantial support in coaching and training Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) focal points at country level;
• Provide advice/information/guidance to programme managers on evaluations on programme design from evaluability perspective;
• Establish partnerships with governments, regional evaluation associations, networks and academic institutions to promote capacity and learning on gender responsive evaluation.

Promote UN coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive:

• Collaborate with UN Country Teams on evaluation and regional inter-agency evaluation working groups on integrating gender equality perspective in evaluation;
• Collaborate with other UN joint evaluation initiatives at regional and country level;
• Contribute to UN Women in United Nations Evaluation Group taskforces and substantial contribution to the inclusion of gender equality dimensions in UNCF and system-wide evaluation;
• Collaborate with professional evaluation bodies in the area of gender responsive evaluation.

Manage knowledge building and sharing in Evaluation in the region and IEAS:

• Keep abreast of developments in the area of evaluation, exploring innovative approaches in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment;
• Identify, collect, and disseminate best practices and lessons learned;
• Contribute to the active exchange of information with evaluation specialists and internal audit specialists of IEAS.

Perform other related duties and assignments as and when requested by supervisor.

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 Values and Competencies Framework: 

Functional Competencies:

• Knowledge of gender equality analytical work and programming;
• Strong understanding of various methodologies in evaluation, both qualitative and quantitative, such as surveys, record reviews, focus groups and case studies and is able to contribute to the development of the most efficient and effective methodology for the design, with minimal guidance;
• Strong understanding of evaluation ethics and United Nations Evaluation Group code of Conduct;
• Strong understanding of gender responsive evaluation approach; 
• Strong understanding of various sampling techniques and their applications and is able to develop the most accurate sampling technique for the methodology. Has grounded knowledge of how to address gender equality on evaluation design;
• Strong understanding of questionnaire design and is able to develop questionnaires and other review instruments that will address issues identified in the design, independently;
• Strong interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently;
• Ability to collect reliable, valid and accurate information in an objective way;
• Strong knowledge of gender equality and women’s human rights and human rights-based approach;
• Strong skills in management of consultants and/or other temporary personnel.
• Strong training and coaching skills;
• Ability to develop partnerships  to promote gender responsive evaluation in the UN system and with national partners.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in evaluation or relevant social science or related field is required.
• 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 evaluation;
• Experience in conducting gender analysis;
• Experience in conducting/managing a portfolio of strategic, programmatic, institutional and/or project evaluations; 
• Experience working in the field.

Languages:

• Fluency in English is required;
• Working Knowledge in Spanish is required;
• Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset.

Application:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from . Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

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.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)