International Consultant- Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and recovery

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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.

During the past few years, Ethiopia’s economy has been among the fastest-growing economies in the world. Despite the efforts to reduce the gender gap in education, employment, income, and political and economic participation, large inequalities continue to exist in Ethiopia. As the world economy is slowly recovering from a historic economic and social shock emanating from COVID-19 other challenges emanating from conflicts and climate change are still threatening to reverse the hard-won gains on Gender Equality perpetuating gender inequalities across all spheres of life. Ethiopia is in no way an exception to this concerning trend on gender equality.

Women and girls compared to their male counterparts are still more likely to be unemployed, engaged in informal employment, paid less, responsible for much of unpaid care and domestic work. In 2022, over two third (68%) of Ethiopian female youth aged 20 to 24 were not in Employment, Education and Training (NEET) compared to 47% of male youth in the same age group. The female unemployment rate in 2021 stood at 11.7 percent; more than double the male (5.0 percent) at national level ; much worse in urban context where the overall unemployment in urban areas is 17.9 percent and stood at 25.4 percent amongst females and 12.2 for male. (LMS CSA 2021).

Among the total population, estimated to be 123 million in 2022, the rural population in Ethiopia is approximately 83.3%. Agriculture encompasses the largest sector of Ethiopia’s economy, providing 73% of employment, 70% of the raw materials for domestic manufacturing industries while women cover about 70 percent of the agricultural labor force (Food of Agriculture Organization, 2011). However, the country’s agricultural development has faced obstacles from gender-based productivity gap, land degradation and population growth. Female farmers continue to have limited access to and control over fertile land, technological inputs and packages, financial and extension services compared to male farmers.

UN Women in Ethiopia under its Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) designed a comprehensive and multisectoral programming approach to contribute to sustainable and scalable economic empowerment of rural and urban women/girls in Ethiopia. The program encompasses interlinked and integrated interventions aiming at sustainable results and multiplier effects. Promting and Supporting Enabling Policy, Legal and Social Environment; Enhancement of Institutional and Individual Capacities and Private Secors Engagment are the key central programmatic components across all the interventions.

Enabling Policy, Legal and Social Environment for WEE The UN Women country office for Ethiopia works with different stakeholders and coordinate efforts in promoting enabling gender responsive policy, legal and social environment towards women/girl’s economic empowerment through: National Forum on WEE, Networking and Sharing Platforms, production of knowledge products and wider sharing, conducting evidence based policy dialogues; followed by technical support on revisions/development of gender responsive polices/legal frameworks and advocacy and their enforcement . With the objective of changing attitude, behavior, and practices in the community (community at all levels) and institutions, the WEE program applies gender transformative approaches by consciously involving male counterparts among other social norms and behaviour change approaches.

Implementing gender equality commitments at the country level requires governments to formulate policies and procedures that actively promote gender equality and guarantee women’s rights while allocating sufficient financial resources for this purpose. Therefore, a gender equality perspective needs to be adequately considered during the design and budgeting stages of the planning process to ensure that resources and interventions equally benefit women and men. UN Women works with key government institutions including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Planning towards adequate financing for gender equality and institutionalization of gender responsive planning and budgeting. UN Women is currently exploring the possible viable innovative mechanisms for financing gender equality for Ethiopia.

Institutiona and Individual Capacity Building National and local stakeholders’ capacities are built or strengthened through trainings, exposure visits including P2P learning and South South Cooperation, technical support and availing different tools, manuals, guidelines and checklists as well as information on good practices. UN Women also supports direct interventions with women/girls in business and aspiring ones in their access to various soft and technical skills trainings, financial and non-financial services, exposures, productive resources, technologies, climate smart agricultural inputs and practices, market opportunities etc. The program works with implementing partners in organizing women/girls into cooperatives and enterprises followed by various support that sustains their organizations including assisting with tools and system development.

Private Sector Engagement: The partnership with private sector is one of the strategic options that UN Women is taking in Ethiopia but still requires substantive and tailor-made strategy. So far, the engagement with private sector has mostly been through Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) A corporate advocacy and awareness towards gender responsive workplace relations and employment conditions. The vision is to use the private sector to bolster women’s access to finance and growth of Women led MSMEs with potential to trade nationally, regionally and internationally.

Sustainable resilience building and post-disaster recovery: Ethiopia has been experiencing multiple shocks spanning from a prolonged drought for more than 5 consecutive seasons , spontaneous flooding , the COVID-19 pandemic crisis between 2020-2022 , the protracted and inter-communal conflicts the most recent and among the most deadliest in the Northern Ethiopia between 2021 – end of 2022 , the protracted and sporadic active conflicts in some regional states that are hindering economic activities and development for the people particularly women and girls .

All these shocks have created an unprecedented humanitarian emergency and extremely dire living conditions of the populations including over 2 million IDPs, food and nutrition insecurity, upsurge of Gender Based Violence and conflict related sexual violence, deepening extreme poverty, hunger and starvation with Women bearing the brunt of all the impacts of the multiple shocks. Women and girls have suffered the brunt not only at the onset and during the humanitarian crisis but also even after because of the very deep deficit in social economic structures, productive resources and infrastructure. UN Women programming priorities include addressing the livelihood needs of women and girls during and after the humanitarian emergency in form of service provision, sustainable resilience building and support to recovery processes. As such, Women’s Economic Empowerment is seen as the intersection of women’s empowerment in all aspects such as Peacebuilding, dignified life free from any form of violence as well as women’s participation in leadership and governance systems.

Reporting to the Deputy Country Representative and under the overall guidance from the Country Representative, the International Consultant is expected to provide hands on advisory expert services on the strategic prioritization, planning and implementation of Women’s Economic Empowerment portfolio in Ethiopia.

The WEE Programme Consultant works in close collaboration with the relevant programme teams depending on the areas of programming , UN Women Regional teams and relevant HQ staff, Government officials, multi and bi-lateral donors and civil society ensuring successful UN Women programme implementation under WEE portfolio.

Duties and Responsibilities

Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme development and planning

• Lead the strategic thinking and scenarios analysis of Women’s Economic Empowerment opportunities available for Ethiopian women;
• Advise on the relevant theory of change whilst keeping the mandatory alignment to other national and UN frameworks.
• Together with the Women Economic Empowerment team, liaise with the other relevant UN Country teams members for potential Joint programming, national counterparts, donors, UN Women and partners to ensure the Programme results are achieved and resources are managed in a coherent manner;
• Contribute in thematic work-planning, periodic narrative progress reporting;
• Establish systems and tools for project planning, implementation and monitoring, in collaboration with partners;

Guide coordination with national partners and other stakeholders

• Establish or strengthen existing WEE platforms as well as advising on how best they can be leveraged to spur WEE portfolio and outcomes in Ethiopia ;
• Provide guidance to partners on establishment of performance indicators, and monitoring achievement of results;
• Identify capacity building needs and support partners through technical assistance, mentoring, training, cross-partner learning, and capacity development initiatives

Build partnerships and support in developing resource mobilization strategies

• Provide technical support to the development of partnerships and resource mobilization strategies particularly for Women’s Economic Empowerment.
• Identify potential programmatic areas of cooperation, based on strategic goals of UN Women, country needs and donors’ priorities and develop the relevant partnerships on the basis of systematic and up to date donor intelligence.
• Research and analyze information on bilateral, International Monetary Institutions and private sector partners on possible areas of cooperation;
• Manage WEE partner relations at technical level and relay all strategic communication from donors to the country office management team.

Advocate and facilitate knowledge building, management and communication

• Ensure documentation of the programme implementation process and products produced are in accordance with UN Women guidelines;
• Contribute to the exchange of information and knowledge products internally and externally of the programme;
• Advise on the best ways for knowledge management and learning as well as generating lessons learned throughout WEE programme implementation cycle ;

The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization’s Women’s Economic Empowerment, autonomy and recovery portfolio.

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:

Functional Competencies

• Strong programme formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation skills
• Strong capacity to synthesize information and convert them into programmatic markers.
• Strong knowledge of Results Based Management
• Ability to synthesize program performance data and produce analytical reports in order to inform management and strategic decision-making
• Strategic communication
• Strong analytical skills
• Good knowledge of UN programme management systems

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Master’s degree or equivalent in public administration, law, human rights, gender equality, management, social sciences or other related areas 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.
• A project/programme management certification (such as PMP®, PRINCE2®, or MSP®) would be an added advantage.

Expierence

• At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience at the national or international level in providing advisory or strategic planning for an international organization, diplomatic mission, bilateral or multilateral organization particularly in an inclusive economic development and/or post-disaster /conflict sustainable resilience building and recovery.
• Experience in coordinating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating development programmes and projects is required.
• Experience working on social and economic justice is an added advantage.
• Previous experience working in the UN system is desirable.

Language

• Fluency in English required.
• Knowledge of another official UN language is desirable.
• Some working knowledge levels of Amharic is desirable

How To Apply

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2022-07/UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form-en.doc)
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)
• Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns, or other materials.

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.)

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Added 20 hours ago - Updated 2 hours ago - Source: jobs.undp.org