IC/SSA Individual Consultant – Feminist Collaborative Evaluation on UN Women’s approach to Social Norms, UN Women Samoa Office
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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.
The UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office has four main thematic areas:
- Ending Violence against Women and Girls (EVAWG).
- Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE).
- Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action; and
- Women’s Political Empowerment and Leadership (WPEL)
Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
UN Women’s work on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is guided by its Strategic Plan, which articulates how UN Women will leverage its triple mandate, encompassing normative support, UN System coordination and operational activities. In its integrated approach to address the root causes of inequality and affect broader systems change, supporting positive social norms is a critical area.
UN Women’s new Strategic Plan 2022-2025, both, identifies discriminatory social norms as a structural barrier to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and positions positive social norms as a high-leverage mechanism to advance UN Women’s vision.[1] Supporting positive social norms has been identified as one of the seven systemic outcomes in the UN Women global Strategic Plan (2022-2025).[2]
While the inclusion of social norms as a specific outcome has been a recent development, UN Women programming has addressed social norms change directly or indirectly in its broader advocacy on gender equality and specifically in its work within thematic areas that require behavioural and attitudinal change, such as ending violence against women and girls and promoting women in leadership. UN Women adopts an integrated approach to transform the unequal power relations and discriminatory social norms, behaviours and practices and promote those that advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes engaging men and boys as allies to promote respectful, equitable and non-violent relationships, contribute to transforming negative stereotypes constraining women’s participation in public and private life, addressing social norms that prevent women and girls’ access to humanitarian assistance, and increase the acceptance of women as leaders and agents of change. Social norms work is also relevant in cross cutting areas such as education, health, sports and peace, humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction.
UN Women regularly evaluates its own work to enhance accountability, inform decision making and contribute to learning on gender equality. The Independent Evaluation Service (IES) provides evidence for a more relevant, effective and efficient UN Women with greater impact on the lives of women and girls it serves. UN Women carries out strategic corporate, country portfolio and regional evaluations, as well as decentralized evaluations. IES leads strategic evaluations with the support of external evaluators. They assess effectiveness, organizational performance and normative and operational coherence.
Although programmatic efforts on changing social norms have been prevalent in UN Women’s efforts at the global, regional and country level; an explicit recognition of this area of work marks a shift in the organizations philosophy of embedding and advancing social norms work across the four thematic impact areas.[3] Thus, UN Women HQ has taken initiative to begin work defining the social norms outcome area of work to streamline and better inform future programming directions. In this regard, the Independent Evaluation Service is undertaking a formative evaluation: Feminist Collaborative Evaluation (FCE). The FCE will facilitate an in-depth regional approach to provide comprehensive analysis and evidence based on experiences with social norms change programming at the field level across Eastern and Southern Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific regions.
UN Women Samoa Office, which is part of the Fiji Multi Country Office (MCO) has been selected as one of the case study countries from Asia and the Pacific region based on the desk review (meta-analysis of evaluations, review of annual reports, and the regional portfolio reviews), and consultations with UN Women personnel at regional and country levels. Country case study is a critical component of the FCE, as they will explore the pathways of change and inform implicit/explicit theories of change that can provide inspiration and lessons learned for social norms programming efforts at UN Women. In Samoa’s case, social norms work spans across several thematic areas, including political participation and leadership, women’s economic empowerment and ending violence against women. The case study will be participatory and led by Regional Evaluation Specialists in collaboration with the Samoa Country Programme Coordinator, country office M&R/E Officer and support from the National Evaluation Consultant. The case study will also contribute to the ongoing corporate evaluation on Women's Political Participation.
This will include gathering evidence and analysis related to the impact of UN Women's support to women's political participation at country level.
The case studies will engage rights holders, experts in social norms from the country, and civil society in surfacing their understandings of social norms efforts through storytelling or other feminist methodologies rooted in the country and local context.
[1] UN Women. Strategic Plan (2022-2025). Accessed from: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N21/186/22/PDF/N2118622.pdf?OpenElement
[2] UN Women. Strategic Plan (2022-2025). Accessed from: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N21/186/22/PDF/N2118622.pdf?OpenElement
[3] (i) governance and participation in public life; (ii) women ’s economic empowerment; (iii) ending violence against women and girls; and (iv) women, peace and security, humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction.
Duties and Responsibilities
The consultant will be requested to travel to support data collection, the costs of which will be covered by UN Women. Under the overall oversight of the Regional Evaluation Specialist, the consultant may be requested to contribute to the following:
- Develop a stakeholder map of UN Women’s key stakeholders in the case-study country.
- Undertake feminist inquiry, storytelling and other feminist methodologies for participatory and inclusive data collection including through interviews and focus group discussions.
- Lead analyses (in-depth analysis of social norms related project/sub-theme/efforts implemented in the case study country), including systematic document review and triangulation.
- Facilitate participatory workshops with: (a) UN Women Fiji MCO personnel and (b) key civil society stakeholders focusing on social norms efforts.
- Drafting a synthesis report based on data collection and analysis with substantive findings, conclusions and recommendations.
- Develop a brief note related to the UN women's work on political participation in Samoa. Key themes would include: assessing impact, synthesizing key enabling factors and impediments, UN Women's value-add in partnerships, inclusion of Leave no one behind and sustainability.
- Addressing feedback and comments received from UN Women Fiji MCO, IES and FCE Expert[1].
- Other tasks as assigned by the supervisor.
- Duration of the assignment
The work of the National Evaluation Consultant will be home-based and require in-country travel. Approximately 20 days of work are estimated over the period from August to 20th November 2023.
- Expected deliverables
The consultant is expected to work with the deliver the following results.
Deliverables
Estimated working days
Estimated timeline
Deliverable 1:
- Data collection notes (including desk review, workshop facilitation and all FGD’s, KIIs, etc.).
- Synthesis report of country case study PPT and brief note incorporating feedback/inputs from UN Women Fiji MCO, IES and DE Expert.
15
2nd week of September 2023
Deliverable 2:
- Presentation/facilitation of case study validation.
5
October – November 2023
TOTAL
20 workdays over 3 months assignment
Final Report / Deliverable to be submitted at least 1 week before 20th November 2023.
All the documents, including the interview tools, training materials and reports should be submitted in written in English language.
Payment will be made upon submission of deliverables with the approval of the IES Team leader.
All data collected is property of UN Women and should be provided upon request.
Upon receipt of the deliverables and prior to the payment of the installment, the deliverables, related reports and documents will be reviewed and approved by UN Women within one week of submission.
Annexes
After the selection of the Consultant, the following documents will be appended to the ToR:
Annex 1: UN Women GERAAS evaluation quality assessment checklist
Annex 2: UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form
Annex 3: UNEG Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation
Annex 4: UNEG Code of Conduct for Evaluation in the UN system
Annex 5: UN Women Evaluation Handbook
- Input
Under the direct supervision of the Regional Evaluation Specialist for Asia and the Pacific, the consultant will work in close consultation with M&E Officer, Samoa Country Programme Coordinator and relevant personnel at Fiji MCO.
The consultant will also interact and receive guidance from UN Women personnel working on the social norms outcome area and other Evaluation Specialists, national consultants, evaluation analysts and/or interns that may be engaged to support different tasks.
Ethical Code of Conduct
UN Women has developed a UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form for evaluators that must be signed as part of the contracting process, which is based on the UNEG Ethical Guidelines and Code of Conduct. These documents will be annexed to the contracts. All data collected by the evaluation team members must be submitted to the evaluation manager in Word, PowerPoint or Excel formats and is the property of UN Women.
Proper storage of data is essential for ensuring confidentiality and a data protection plan will be developed during the inception phase. The evaluation’s value added is its impartial and systematic assessment of the programme. As with the other stages of the evaluation, involvement of stakeholders should not interfere with the impartiality of the evaluation.
The evaluator(s) have the final judgment on the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation report, and the evaluator(s) must be protected from pressures to change information in the report. Proper procedures for data collection with rights holders who may have been affected by violence must be adhered to as outlined in the WHO Ethical and Safety Recommendations for research on violence against women. Additionally, if the evaluator(s) identify issues of wrongdoing, fraud or other unethical conduct, UN Women procedures must be followed and confidentiality be maintained.
The UN Women Legal Framework for Addressing Non-Compliance with UN Standards of Conduct, and accompanying policies protecting against retaliation and prohibiting harassment and abuse of authority, provide a cohesive framework aimed at creating and maintaining a harmonious working environment, ensuring that staff members do not engage in any wrongdoing and that all allegations of wrongdoing are reported promptly, investigated and appropriate action taken to achieve accountability.
- Performance evaluation
Contractor’s performance will be evaluated based on timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered.
Required experience and qualifications
The Individual Consultant should fulfil the following requirements:
[1] A DE Expert under the SSA contract with UN Women Fiji MCO will review and provide inputs to the synthesis report before finalization.
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
Functional Competencies:
- Good programme formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation skills
- Good knowledge of Results Based Management
- Ability to gather and interpret data, reach logical conclusions and present findings and recommendations
- Good analytical skills
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
- Master’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, international relations and/or development, or other relevant areas or other related field is required.
- A first-level University Degree in combination with two (2) additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
Experience and Skills:
- At least 5 years (Master’s Degree) or 7 years (Bachelor’s Degree) of proven experience and technical expertise on feminist inquiry, qualitative research, participatory data collection methods such as storytelling, outcome harvesting, or most significant change in the field of gender equality and women’s empowerment is required;
- Three years (3) of experience in social norms programmatic efforts is desirable.
- Experience facilitating workshops with diverse stakeholders.
- Excellent drafting and analytical skills to produce and present concise reports.
- Experience working with UN Women or the UN system and a solid understanding of its programming, coordination, and normative roles at the regional and/or country level is an asset.
- Computer literacy and ability to effectively use office technology equipment, IT tools, ability to use Internet and email.
Language and other skills:
- English (with demonstrated abilities of writing high quality reports).
- Samoan (Fluent in speaking and understanding).
Evaluation
Initially, individual consultants will be short-listed based on the following minimum qualification criteria:
- Master’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, international relations and/or development, or other relevant areas or other related field is required. A first-level University Degree in combination with two (2) additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
- At least 5 years (Master’s Degree) or 7 years (Bachelor’s Degree) of proven experience and technical expertise on feminist inquiry, qualitative research, participatory data collection methods such as storytelling, outcome harvesting, or most significant change in the field of gender equality and women’s empowerment is required.
The short-listed individual consultants will be further evaluated based on a cumulative analysis scheme, with a total score being obtained upon the combination of weighted technical and financial attributes. Cost under this method of analysis is rendered as an award criterion, which will be 30% out of a total score of 100 points.
Evaluation of submitted offers will be done based on the following formula:
,
where:
T
is the total technical score awarded to the evaluated proposal (only to those proposals that pass 70% of 70 points obtainable under technical evaluation);
C
is the price of the evaluated proposal;
Clow
is the lowest of all evaluated proposal prices among responsive proposals; and
X
is the maximum financial points obtainable (30 points)
Technical evaluation will be represented through desk review of applications. Interviews and/or written tests will be organized if needed only, depending on the short-listed candidates’ qualifications.
- Technical Qualification Evaluation Criteria: The technical part is evaluated on the basis of its responsiveness to the Terms of Reference (TOR).
No.
Criteria
Maximum points
- Master’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, international relations and/or development, or other relevant areas or other related field is required. A first-level University Degree in combination with two (2) additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
A first-level University Degree – 10pts, Masters or equivalent – 15pts
15
- At least 5 years (Master’s Degree) or 7 years (Bachelor’s Degree) of proven experience and technical expertise on feminist inquiry, qualitative research, participatory data collection methods such as storytelling, outcome harvesting, or most significant change in the field of gender equality and women’s empowerment is required.
(Masters) or (Bachelors) – 7pts. Each year over 5 (or 7)yrs. – 1pts up to a max 15pts
15
- Three years (3) of experience in social norms programmatic efforts is desirable.
3yrs – 5pts, each year over 3 years – 1pts, up to a max of 10 pts)
10
- Experience facilitating workshops with diverse stakeholders.
7
- Excellent drafting and analytical skills to produce and present concise reports.
6
- Experience working with UN Women or the UN system and a solid understanding of its programming, coordination, and normative roles at the regional and/or country level is an asset.
6
- Computer literacy and ability to effectively use office technology equipment, IT tools, ability to use Internet and email.
6
- English (with demonstrated abilities of writing high quality reports).
- Samoan (Fluent in speaking and understanding)
5
Maximum Total Technical Scoring
70
- Financial Evaluation Criteria: In this Second Stage, the financial proposal of candidates, who have attained minimum 70% score in the technical evaluation (at least 49 points), will be compared.
WINNING CANDIDATE
The winning candidate will be the candidate, who has accumulated the highest aggregated score (technical scoring + financial scoring).
- Submission of application
Interested candidates are requested to submit fully completed application on the UNDP Vacancy Site.
Submission Package:
- Cover letter explaining the suitability of the consultant: applicants are encouraged to address experience and qualifications listed in the ‘criteria for technical evaluation’.
- Duly filled Personal History Form (P11) and/or Curriculum Vitae (CV) of consultant including records of experience in similar assignments and specific outputs obtained; P11 can be downloaded at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment
Financial proposal – specifying a total lump sum amount for the tasks specified in this Terms of Reference. The financial proposal shall include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (daily rate and number of anticipate working days and any other possible costs).
Please read, use, and complete ANNEX I and ANNEX II below to provide your financial proposal.
Applications without a complete financial proposal will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. UN Women reserves the right to accept or reject any bid.
The consultancy recruitment process will be governed by the rules and regulations of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).
UN Women Statement on 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).
Deadline of all submission: 15th August 2023
Annex I
Price Proposal Guideline and Template
The prospective Individual Contractor should take the following explanations into account during submission of his/her price proposal.
1.Lump Sum Amount
The daily price proposal should indicate a "lump sum amount" which is "all-inclusive"; All costs (professional fees, living allowances, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the Individual Contractor needs to be factored into the proposed price.
UN Women will not withhold any amount of the payments for tax and/or social security related payments. UN Women shall have no liability for taxes, duties or other similar charges payable by the Individual Contractor in respect of any amounts paid to the Individual Contractor under this Contract, and the Contractor acknowledges that UN Women will not issue any statements of earnings to the Individual contractor in respect of any such payments.
Contract price is fixed to activities/deliverables indicated in the ToR, regardless of the changes in the cost components (such as days invested for completion of the deliverables.)
2.Travel costs
No travel is envisaged for the implementation of the current assignments, unless otherwise agreed and decided by UN Women.
3.Daily Subsistence Allowance
Not applicable.
4.Currency of the price proposal
The applicants are requested to submit their price proposals in Samoan TALA$.
In case of proposals in other currency, these shall be converted into Samoan TALA$ using the official UN exchange rate for currency conversion at the date of applications’ submission deadline.
Annex II
Price Proposal Submission Form
[ Mandatory document for the Consultant to complete and submit]
To: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Ref: IC/SSA Individual Consultant – Feminist Collaborative Evaluation on UN Women’s approach to
Social Norms, UN Women Samoa Office
Dear Sir / Madam,
I, the undersigned, offer to provide professional consulting services to UN Women within the scope of the referred Assignment. Having examined, understood, and agreed to the Terms of Reference and its annexes, the receipt of which are hereby duly acknowledged, I, the undersigned, offer to deliver professional services, in conformity with the Terms of Reference.
My maximum total price proposal for the assignment is given below:
Estimated Costs (in TALA$)
Unit of Measure (e.g., Day, Month, etc)
Unit Price
(TALA$)
No. of Units
Total Price
(TALA$)
Consultancy Fee
Daily Fee
$
Other Related Costs (please specify)
$
Total TALA$
$
I confirm that my financial proposal will remain unchanged. I also confirm that the price that I quote is gross, and is inclusive of all legal expenses, including but not limited to social security, income tax, pension, etc., which shall be required applicable laws.
I agree that my proposal shall remain binding upon me for 60 days.
I understand that you are not bound to accept any proposal you may receive.
[ Signature]
Date:
Name:
Address:
Telephone / Fax:
Email:
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