National Consultant-Reviewing, Copy Editing and Proof-Reading the Guideline on Gender Responsive Advertisement

Contract

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Background

The media is a potentially powerful channel of information in a society. The messages transmitted can change or reinforce social norms and behaviours and mobilize citizens to take actions. Media’s role in advancing women’s right by changing narratives and challenging stereotypes is critical. Women and the Media is one of the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action where the media have been noted as being an influential power to challenge and change people’s perception, behaviour, and impact on policy dialogue.[1] The Action plan also underlined the need to address continuous negative projection of degrading and other similar images of women through the media including through advertisement. It called for an action to intensify the media’s role in balancing unequal gender relations and promoting gender equality. Similarly, the recently adopted Ethiopian Women Development and Change Strategy (2017)[2] and the Ethiopian Women Development and Change Package (2017)[3] identified similar responsibility by the media making it one of the responsible organs to be a partner in ensuring the participation and benefit of women in the country.

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) works to enhance the capacity of the media and increase its awareness regarding gender equality including through successive capacity building training and availing guidelines to enable them practice gender-sensitive reporting and promote positive portrayal of women in the media. It also advocates for increased participation of women in the media, including in leadership positions. UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO), in collaboration with Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority (EBA), has developed a project on ‘Enhancing the Role of Media in Promoting Gender Equality and Women in Leadership’. Under this project, considering the key role advertisements play in shaping narratives and reinforcing stereotypes, UN Women ECO in collaboration with EBA has provided capacity building training for advertisement professionals. The trainings were organized with the aim of enhancing the gender equality knowledge of advertising professionals so that they begin to practice gender sensitive advertisement; particularly, by reducing stereotypical representation of women in advertisements. During these trainings one of the challenges raised for not exercising gender sensitive advertisement practices were lack of contextualised toolkit and reference guideline or manual in the area.

With this background and in order to fill the gap on the availability of a guide for progressive gender portrayals in advertising, UN Women in collaboration with EBA supported the development of a comprehensive set of guidelines with accompanying checklist on gender sensitive/responsive advertisement.

UN Women ECO is therefore seeking to use the services of a national consultant to review, edit, copy edit and proofread the guideline, both Amharic and English Version, to ensure the guideline is comprehensive, concise, clear and user-friendly.

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Duties and Responsibilities

1. SCOPE OF THE WORK

The principal tasks under the consultancy are the following:

• Conduct a comprehensive review of the guideline with a view to ensure flow, clarity and continuity;
• Check correctness of language- grammatically correct language, spellings of the guideline;
• Ensure a consistent style and format throughout the document and elimination of repetition and inconsistencies;
• Appropriate positioning and numbering of boxes, figures and tables;
• Consistent font (s) – as relevant to headings and text;
• Appropriate use of italicized and bolded words;
• Ensure all footnotes, sources, references are complete and consistent as per UN Women publication guidelines;
• After edited and copy-edited, conduct one or more rounds of proofreading, checking spelling, as well as acronyms, table of contents and other abbreviations, style consistency. etc.
• The editor should consult the United Nations Editorial Manual and UN Women’s Gender Inclusive Language Guideline (both documents will be provided by UN Women).
• The consultant is expected to be proactive and work closely with ECO Women in Leadership and Governance team on the guideline.

2. EXPECTED OUTPUTS AND DELIVERABLES

A copy edited and proofread, both the Amharic and English version, of the guideline on gender responsive advertisement.

Competencies

Compliance to UN Core Values

• Demonstrates integrity and fairness by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Commitment to UN Women’s mission, vision, values and strategic goals;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Teats all people without favouritism;
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced degree or equivalent in Gender and Media, Journalism, Language or another relevant field.

Experience and skills

• At least 5 years of demonstrated work experience as an editor and copy editor;
• Experience with organizing, interpreting and presenting information in meaningful written form for varied audiences;
• Strong writing and communication skills;
• Technical knowledge specific to this field will be considered a strong asset.

Language and other skills

• Excellent English and Amharic language writing and editing skill required.
• Computer skills: full command of all Microsoft applications