National Consultant - Promoting Women’s Employment in Non-Traditional Sectors and highlighting their contribution to Jordan’s response to COVID-19 Pandemic

Consultant Human Rights

Contract

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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.

UN Women Jordan Country Office supports the Government of Jordan to implement global norms and standards on gender equality and women’s empowerment; promotes women’s economic empowerment; and implements a resilience and empowerment model for Syrian refugee women and vulnerable Jordanian women. The country office is implementing its Strategic Note for the period 2018-2022 and is prioritizing coherence and interlinkages across its projects and programmes under these three pillars. This requires effective implementation, monitoring and reporting on progress and results and coordination with key stakeholders in government, civil society, and the international community.

In the past decade, Jordan’s economic growth has remained stagnant and has been characterized by a persistently low level of labor force participation coupled, especially among youth and women with a highly segmented labor market according to gender, nationality, and formal/informal employment. The labor market of Jordan is deeply segregated horizontally and vertically. Among multiple underlining causes that contribute to the issue is harmful social norms that deem certain fields of work as suitable or not suitable for women, which creates a strong labor market segregation in the country. In Jordan, almost half of employed women work in the public sector, where they are highly concentrated in the education and health sectors, which are fields of work that are understood to be traditionally suitable and aligned with the socially assigned roles for women. In addition, women are concentrated in the entry and middle managerial levels, with few reaching leadership and decision-making positions. This dilemma hinders women’s economic participation due to abundance of labor supply in few sectors and scarcity of market demand, and those who are employed are in many cases pushed out of the labor market due to a number of structural and social challenges.

Despite their low labor force participation, women’s value of work in Jordan was reaffirmed during the COVID-19 outbreak, where they constituted more than half of the workers in the categorized critical sectors.

Working women in both the education and health sectors provided a vital contribution in the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to do so. In addition, evidence shows that women’s contribution to the household income is vital in creating a buffer to economic shocks, as households with dual-income earners are more resilient and able to address the COVID-19 effects on the economy and employment. Especially, since it is expected for unemployment rates to increase substantially if one of the two earners loses his/her job the other income earner can help the household to survive this crisis.

UN Women Jordan Country Office is seeking the services of a researcher to conduct a qualitative study on women’s economic participation in non-traditional sectors to document role models and their role and vital contribution to the Jordanian economic growth within and outside of the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, the qualitative study will also explore perception changes regarding the value of work in health and educational sectors by documenting women who worked in critical sectors during the national response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Objectives of the assignment

The main objective of this consultancy is to design and conduct a qualitative study on women in the non-traditional employment sector for females in Jordan, and to document role-models in non-traditional and male-dominated fields of work. In addition, to highlight the crucial contribution that working women provided to the national response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The selected consultant will have to produce a publication that is ready for printing and dissemination.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under overall guidance of the UN Women Country Representative and direct supervision of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme Analyst, the consultant will perform the following tasks linked to the design and roll-out of a qualitative study on women’s labor force participation in non-traditional sectors and male-dominated fields of work, as well as, the crucial contribution that working women provided to the national response to COVID-19 outbreak:

1. Submit a concept note that explains the targeted population, workplan, and potential women interviewees list;
2. Conduct a desk review of relevant reports and studies to be included in the study;
3. Develop a questionnaire for the qualitative data collection in collaboration with UN Women
4. Collect qualitative data, through focal group discussions and key informant interviews (KIIs) to identify and document female role-models working in non-traditional/male-dominated sectors and in the traditional sector per the approved study’s concept note, covering both pre and post COVID-19 pandemic contexts. The data will cover women’s experience working in the non-traditional sector, the challenges they faced, how they overcame them, and their success stories and their effects on their individual and household levels. Interviewees should include women working in both nontraditional and traditional sectors, and women working in critical sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic, as per the approved study’s concept note. The number of key informant cases should be no less than 20 women.
5. Analyze the collected data and produce a draft report/publication with preliminary findings and recommendations and submit it to UN Women for revision and approval.
6. Revise the draft report per UN Women comments. This will include virtual meetings with UN Women to finalize the report.
7. Submit the final report, including qualitative analysis and women role models stories and recommendations, for dissemination.

Expected Deliverables

The consultant is expected to deliver the following:

#

Deliverables

Percentage of total payment

Timeline

1.

• A concept note that explains the targeted population, workplan, and potential women interviewees list;
• A desk review of relevant reports and studies about the subject in Jordan;
• A questionnaire for the qualitative data collection

20%

14 working days after contract signature

2

Qualitative data collected, analyzed and first draft of the report with preliminary findings of FGDs and KIIs on women’s labour force participation and value of work in nontraditional sectors with recommendations submitted to UN Women. The qualitative data and cases included in the report should demonstrate role models of women in nontraditional sectors and women working in critical sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

40%

54 working days

3

Final qualitative study report, finalized and approved by UN Women

40%

22 working days

All the documents, including the interview tools, focal group discussion materials, and reports should be submitted in writing in English language.

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.

Performance evaluation:

Contractor’s performance will be evaluated based on timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered.

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/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf?la=en&vs=637

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in business, economic, social science or other related fields. · Bachelor’s degree in combination with 7 additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the master’s degree

Experience:

• At least 7 years of experience of relevant work in the field of women’s economic empowerment research and advocacy and female labour force participation.
• Proven expertise in gender equality and women’s empowerment in private and public sectors
• Proven expertise in the field of promoting women’s labour force participation in non-traditional and male-dominated sectors is an asset.

Language and other skills:

• Excellent command of written and spoken Arabic
• Very good command of written and spoken English

Evaluation:

Applications will be evaluated based on the Cumulative analysis.

• Technical Qualification (100 points) weight; [70%]
• Financial Proposal (100 points) weight; [30%]

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the proposals, with evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated.

Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on the following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

Technical Evaluation Criteria

Obtainable Score

Education

10 %

Experience and skills

80 %

Language

10 %

Total Obtainable Score

100 %

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically-qualified candidates.

Financial/Price Proposal evaluation****:

• Only the financial proposal of candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation will be considered and evaluated.
• The total number of points allocated for the price component is 100.
• The maximum number of points will be allotted to the lowest price proposal that is opened/ evaluated and compared among those technically qualified candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation. All other price proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.

Submission package

• CV
• UN Women Personal History Form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
• Financial proposal. The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount breaking down a daily professional fee
• All applications must include (as an attachment) the CV, Personal History Form (P-11) and the financial proposal. The above-mentioned documents should be merged in a standalone file including all of them since the online application submission does only permit to upload one file per application. Applications without the above documents including financial proposal will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.
• Please note that only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

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.

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Added 3 years ago - Updated 3 years ago - Source: jobs.undp.org