National Consultant – Women’s Economic Empowerment

Background

UN Women Regional Office for the Arab States (ROAS) adopted its strategic plan for 2022-2025 in March 2022. In the strategic plan, it is highlighted that one of the key priorities to achieve gender equality in the Arab States is the speedy acceleration of women’s employment throughout the region, which has hovered around 21% since the 1990s. To address this, UN Women is embarking on a large-scale, innovative multi-country framework and program to surge women’s employment in 7 countries (3 in North Africa, 2 in the Levante and 2 in the Gulf).

Working with national stakeholders in several of the countries, the UN Women Regional Office concluded the initial phase of research for programme concept design in May 2022. During that time, multi-country analytics focused on the factors behind the stagnated levels of women’s employment in the Arab States, looking at not only challenges but, more specifically, on distinct opportunities that could accelerate women’s employment in the region. The analysis established the need for a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing together efforts to shift social norms, reduce the burden of care work, target key sectors with important growth opportunities, improve laws and policies, and strategically use social and mass media to bring about these changes. The strategy has a strong emphasis on the role of the private sector, focusing on three sectors, with distinct business cases in each.  Lastly, the approach seeks to guarantee sustainable finance to deliver on this agenda through a shift to gender-responsive budgeting and blended finance.

The regional multipronged framework will be implemented across several countries, with Egypt being one of them. To ensure strong national ownership and relevance of the regional framework’s implementation in Egypt, the UN Women Country Office for Egypt will work closely with its key government partners, private sector, and research institutions to contextualise the programme to national priorities and local context. In so doing, the UN Women Country Office in Egypt will ensure that the future work supports Egypt’s Vision 2030 and the National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian Women 2030, coming under the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF 2023-2027). This will be done through national consultations and analytical work on relevant themes and economic sectors. To support this process, UN Women Egypt CO is looking to engage the services of a long-term National Consultant on Women’s Economic Empowerment to:

• Support the convening of an ad hoc consultative working group made up of key government partners and national experts to oversee the fleshing out and nationally contextualizing the regional framework’s implementation in the country;
• Support stakeholder consultation and facilitate co-creation of the employment programme.
• Support the development of the country's women’s economic empowerment profile under the regional framework, ensuring up-to-date statistics and analysis in key sectors and to contribute to the Regional Office’s calculations of overall employment projections.
• Support fleshing out the strategies and steps to be used in Egypt to create an enabling environment for women’s employment, including identifying with partners any key policy and legal reforms.
• For Egypt, contribute to sector assessments to support women’s employment.
• Support the development of a sustainable finance component to be used by UN Women’s regional partners (IFIs, MDBs, others) to advance women’s employment. 
• Based on the above, and working with the ad hoc consultative working group, support the development of a country-specific implementation plan under the regional framework.

The national consultant will work under the overall guidance of the UN Women Egypt CO Country Representative and the Deputy Regional Director for the UN Women Regional Office for Arab States leading the WEE team in ROAS.

Duties and Responsibilities

Develop a detailed workplan to achieve necessary country contextualization of the regional framework.

• Support the convening an ad hoc consultative working group made up of key government partners and national experts to oversee the fleshing out and nationally contextualizing the regional framework’s implementation in the country.
• Develop a detailed workplan for the Egypt CO on how to contextualize the regional employment framework and its inception, following the guidelines and outlines established by the Regional Office and the country-level ad hoc consultative working group.
• Undertake a desk review and develop a country context analysis aligned to the themes and sectors of interest to complement the employment projections, particularly referring to the accelerators and enablers of the employment programme. Finalise the country context analysis based on feedback from UN Women and the ad hoc consultative working group.

Support the development of country-specific implementation plan under the multi-disciplinary regional framework on Surging Women’s Employment

• In collaboration with UN Women Regional Office (advisor and consultants) and the country-level ad hoc consultative working group, undertake a mapping of key national and sectoral level stakeholders, civil society organization and businesses, particularly as related to the amplifiers of the regional Surging Women’s Employment framework/programme.
• Support (introductory) workshops to sensitize stakeholders of the design processes and the possible work in Egypt under the regional Surging Women’s Employment programme.
• Contribute to the development of baseline and target indicators per country.
• Conduct detailed key informant interviews, focus group discussion, and sector level / member-based organizations workshops to consult on the design of the Surging Women’s Employment programme. Use these engagements to:

1. Ideate and conceptualize possible interventions.
2. Identify international best practices to introduce and national aspects to scale up.
3. Map the ecosystem players (as aligned to the programmes multi-disciplinary approach), their strength challenges and opportunities.
4. Seek validation of ideas from the country-level ad hoc consultative working group and other leading experts.

• Based on the above, and working with the ad hoc consultative working group, support the development of a country-specific implementation plan under the regional framework.
• Identify baseline and targets for the country-specific implementation plan, grounding these in nationally generated and programme generated data.
• Support the validation of the proposed implementation plan with the ad hoc consultative working group, key international partners and beyond.
• Finalise the implementation plan based on these consultations.
• Support the initial rolling out of activities under the country-level implementation plan.

Above, develop baseline and targets for the country-specific implementation plan, grounding these in nationally generated and programme generated data.

Perform other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the development and delivery of the employment strategy.

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: 

Functional Competencies

• Strong knowledge of women’s economic empowerment, especially on private sector development.
• Strong programme formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation skills.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Ability to synthesize program performance data and produce analytical reports to inform management and strategic decision-making.
• Strong networking skills.
• Ability to identify and analyze trends, opportunities, and threats to fundraising.
• Strong knowledge of the region.
• Ability to write policy papers, speeches, and briefings.

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Economics, Finance, Law, Gender, or a related field 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/program management certification would be an added advantage.

Experience

• At least 3 years of experience in the development and management of large-scale national programs required.
• Demonstrated experience in Women Economic Empowerment and Employment Creation is required.
• Experience in supporting multi-stakeholder consultations is required.
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and spreadsheet and database packages, experience in handling of web-based management systems is required.
• Excellent and verbal written communication skills is required.

Language Requirements

• Fluency (written & spoken) in English and Arabic is required;
• Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset.

Evaluation Criteria:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology: Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for the financial evaluation.

Criteria Weight Technical: 100% (100 points)

• Criteria 1: Master’s degree or equivalent in Economics, Finance, Law, Gender, or a related field (10 Points).
• Criteria 2: At least 3 years of experience in the development and management of large-scale national programs (20 Points).
• Criteria 3: Demonstrated experience in Women Economic Empowerment and Employment Creation (30 Points).
• Criteria 4: Experience in supporting multi-stakeholder consultations (20 Points).
• Criteria 5: Excellent and verbal written communication skills (10 Points)
• Criteria 6: Fluency in English and Arabic (10 points)

Application:

Interested Individual Candidate must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11). UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from  make sure that you sign the form, and
• 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, and
• A cover letter with a brief presentation of your consultancy explaining your suitability for the work and link to portfolio of work.
• Personal CV.

The above-mentioned documents MUST BE merged in a standalone file including all them, since the online application submission does only permit to uploading one file per application.

You can merge your documents by using Online resources. 

Incomplete submission can be a ground for disqualification. Make sure that you provide a valid email address for future communications.

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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.)