Policy Specialist - Gender - Maharashtra (Open to Indian Nationals Only)

Contract

This is a SB-5 contract. This kind of contract is known as Service Board / Service Contract. It is normally only for nationals. More about SB-5 contracts.

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 and the diverse gender as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

All human development and human rights issues involve gender dimensions. UN Women globally focuses on key priority areas fundamental to women’s equality and can unlock progress across the board. UN Women’s priority areas include increasing women’s leadership and participation in political spaces, ending violence against women, enhancing women’s economic empowerment, engaging in all aspects of women’s peace and security processes, making gender equality central to national planning and budgeting through Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) and advancing gender in intergovernmental processes.

UN Women’s work on GRB involves ensuring that national planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation processes incorporate a gender perspective. UN Women’s GRB programmes at the regional and country level have significantly contributed to this by building political support, developing technical resources and capacities, generating good practices for improving women's access to services and increasing accountability for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE). At the forefront of global, regional, and local advocacy for the application of GRB, UN Women has built partnerships with various government, inter-governmental and non-governmental partners to further efforts and demonstrate GRB’s relevance to sustainable development, aid effectiveness, public sector reform and financing for development.

UN Women’s India Country Office (ICO), based in New Delhi, India, works towards ensuring that policies and programmes at the national and state level are gender responsive. The GRB programme of the ICO is implemented in close partnership with its nodal Ministry that is Ministry of Women and Child Development and the state governments.

In the State of Maharashtra, UN Women and UNICEF have been collaborating with the Government of Maharashtra since 2016 to make public finances more responsive to the needs of diverse constituencies of women and children respectively. The focus is on tracking of budget/programme/scheme outlays to outcomes for women and children in the state to contribute towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Under this partnership, the UN Women supports the Departments of Finance and Women and Child Development (WCD) to strengthen the institutionalisation of mechanisms and processes to undertake gender responsive budgeting.

The technical expertise and policy advisory need to be continued over the next two years for establishing/strengthening relevant gender responsive policy tools for the larger impact of having inclusive and gender-sensitive programmes/schemes. Leveraging on the institutional capacity, past work and established networks and partnerships, the focus will be on creating an enabling environment by building capacities of key stakeholders to address gender issues and be instrumental in making the Government’s planning and budgeting processes more gender responsive.

Within this context, UN Women seeks the services of a "Policy Specialist – Gender" to provide technical expertise and policy advisory support on gender responsive policies and governance, including gender responsive budgeting to the Department of Finance and Department of WCD, Government of Maharashtra.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall guidance and direct supervision of the Deputy Representative, UNW ICO and day to day reporting to the designated official of the nodal department in Government of Maharashtra, the "Policy Specialist - Gender" will have the following specific tasks:

Technical advisory to State Government on Advancing Gender Equality and SDGs:

• Provide policy support to the state government on gender issues and integration of gender in policy documents;
• Close coordination with Minister's Office, WCD Secretariat and WCD Commissionerate in Maharashtra as required to support and strengthen state Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (GEWE) policy and post-policy engagement as required;
• Technical support on gender mainstreaming, strengthening gender data, and tracking of gender indicators to the Sustainable Development Coordination Centre;
• Participate and contribute to knowledge building and networking focusing on GEWE at the state and regional level as required.

Strengthen interdepartmental coordination on gender responsive budgeting (GRB) at the state level:

• Establish effective coordination within the Finance Department, Women and Child Development Department, Planning, Skill Development and any other line departments to promote and institutionalise GRB;
• Close coordination with Department of Finance (DoF) in managing and strengthening GRB with the State Outcomes Cell;
• Coordinate with UNICEF in planning and execution of agreed actions, review and strengthening partnerships on gender and child budgeting;
• Undertake a mapping exercise of the state-level planning, budgeting and auditing processes and support in developing an action plan for GRB at the State level;
• Advocate for the adoption of proposed structures and institutional mechanisms and support for strengthening the institutional mechanisms on GRB;
• Identify opportunities for collaboration and joint action with State line departments for applying GRB across sectors. Undertake sectoral GRB analysis for the line departments in key focused sectors;
• Proactively pursue strategic networking and partnership opportunities to further strengthen GRB in the state;
• Advocate for organising pre-budget consultation with CSO, women’s groups, academia and other stakeholders in collaboration with WCD, Finance and line departments;
• Facilitate in developing the annual GBS in accordance with the DoF's financial planning and reporting cycle/state budget cycle.

Documentation:

• Undertake state-specific situational analysis of gender indicators and state initiatives to map the current status;
• Provide support in documenting best practices on gender mainstreaming and GRB at the state and sub-state levels;
• Undertake state level budgetary and policy analysis from a gender perspective, and prepare briefing reports to inform policy formulation;
• Facilitate and contribute to conducting research on impact of state government schemes on women empowerment;
• Support IT specialist and UN Women project team in roll out and implementation of e-governance tool on GB.

Facilitating training and capacity development of relevant constituents on gender mainstreaming:

• Facilitating and supporting state gender action plans emerging from state level/regional GRB workshops and trainings;
• Review and contextualize training tools, manual, and other resource material on gender mainstreaming, GB and engendering SDGs for the state;
• Provide coordination and support (IEC/advocacy) on GRB training/workshops with select State Departments;
• Develop partnerships with state-level resource institutions, agencies, experts and practitioners for capacity building on gender responsive governance;
• Taking lead in planning and organising GRB capacity building training for government functionaries and stakeholders as required;
• Monitor the outcomes of the trainings by undertaking pre and post assessment and developing quality training reports.

Partnership management and networking:

• Identify opportunities for partnering with private sector, UN agencies, state partners, organisations on UN Women Strategic Action Plan and SDGs;
• Develop a resource mobilisation plan for the state, and support resource mobilisation initiatives to strengthen ongoing efforts on gender responsive policy and governance at the State level;
• Building and maintaining issue-based partnerships and coalitions with the private sector, donors and partners;
• Provide inputs to outreach/publicity material geared towards partners and donors;
• Facilitate meetings and visits of senior management team in the state and represent UN Women in platforms and events;
• Coordinate with project team for timely completion of project deliverables;
• Preparation of monthly progress reports.

Any other duties as assigned by supervisor relevant to this position.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Develop a workplan for the assignment in consultation with UN Women, UNICEF, WCD, Finance Department, Planning, Skill Development, and relevant partners.
• State level detailed action plan developed based on mapping exercise of the state-level planning, budgeting and auditing processes and stakeholder engagement to strengthen the Outcomes Cell, Department of Finance and coordination with WCD.
• Sectoral GRB analysis for select line departments in key focused sectors undertaken and conduct inter departmental consultations and meetings.
• State level training of government officials and state specific training module institutionalised in the government departments.
• Manage state partnerships and develop concept notes for resource mobilisation initiatives at the State level.
• Develop a report on the assignment covering the documentation of practices, approaches, methodology, limitations and challenges and identify good practices to be replicated in other states.

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

• Excellent knowledge of Gender;
• Strong knowledge of the region;
• Excellent networking skills;
• Ability to interact with donors, identify and analyze trends, opportunities and threats to fundraising;
• Ability to perform qualitative and quantitative policy research;
• Ability to advocate and provide policy advice;
• Excellent analytical skills;
• Ability to write policy papers, speeches, briefings;
• Strong knowledge of programme development, implementation, results based management and reporting.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s Degree or equivalent in Social Sciences/Economics/Social Work /Gender Studies/Public Administration/Public Finance/Policy or related fields.
• 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:

• Minimum 7 years of experience at the national/state level working with development projects, including hands-on experience in design, implementation, and monitoring/evaluation of projects, preferably on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights.
• Experience working with national/ state governments, particularly on gender-responsive governance, is required. State-specific experience will be preferable.
• Experience in policy analysis, data analysis, gender statistics, and quantitative and qualitative research is desirable.

Language:

• Proficiency in English; good command over Hindi and Marathi is desirable.

Application Information:

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org

Application Information: Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org

• All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs
• 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;
• UN Women will only be able to respond to those applications in which there is further interest.

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.