National Consultant

Background

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women’s vision is of a world in which women and men have equal opportunities and capacities, where women are empowered and where principles of gender equality are firmly embedded in all efforts to advance development, peace and security. Globally, UN Women works to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) a reality for women and girls and stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on five priority areas: women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems; women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy; all women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence and ensure that women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and humanitarian action.

UN Women Ethiopia launched its first program on Women in Leadership and Governance ' increased participation and effective representation of women in leadership in Ethiopia: The road to equitable development' in the year 2017. The program aims to contribute to the overall goal of increasing the effective participation and representation of women in leadership in Ethiopia, particularly focusing on the legislative and executive branch of the Government. In line with this, to enhance women’s leadership capacity and sustain their ability to climb the leadership ladder, UN Women Ethiopia plans to support regional states including Amhara and Oromia in designing and implementing a mentorship program for women leaders in the region.  

In recent times, women are increasingly attaining positions of leadership within the federal and regional government structures. Yet, the number of women leaders, especially in higher leadership roles, remains low. This can be attributed to many things including structural and cultural barriers. In order to overcome such challenges and sustain their presence in leadership positions, women leaders need to be supported and encouraged through mentorship. Mentorship provides a broader perspective by which women in lower and middle level leadership learn from senior leaders and an opportunity to build networks and social capital. Networking and building social capital are important components of excelling in a professional life; however, this remains a challenge for women who do not access such spaces and/or opportunities. Furthermore, women’s triple role i.e their productive, reproductive and community management role limits their time making it even more difficult to find such networking opportunities. This is especially true in the political structure where access to such networks is limited.

A mentorship program designed with an understanding of the needs and constrains of women in Ethiopian political structures will serve as a personal enhancement strategy for both the mentors and the mentees. It will be an important tool to support learning and growth by sharing experience and expertise. It will provide mentors an opportunity to increase their key leadership skill and support the next generation of leaders. Mentees also gain access to role models where they can learn from the challenges and opportunities of their mentors and tap into their mentors’ network to increase their visibility.

This TOR is therefore developed to facilitate the recruitment of a consultant to map available formal and informal mentorship mechanisms both within and outside government structures and design a workable and formal mentorship program to institutionalize gender aware mentoring that values knowledge sharing and can be adopted by government institutions.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Prepare an inception report that includes proposed outline, methodology and workplan
• Document efforts to implement mentorship programs within the public and private sector and identifying the lessons learned and shortcomings of such efforts.
• Based on such analysis and drawing lessons from other countries, develop a roadmap for UN Women and its partners to implement mentorship programs.
• Develop and design a contextualized mentorship program that can be applied and sustained within the government structure.
• Identify recommendations and support UN Women Ethiopia and its partners in the development of sustainability measures for the program and foster a mentorship culture.
• Present the final draft on a validation workshop for the stakeholders and incorporate feedbacks.

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling UN Women values and ethical standards.
• Demonstrates a commitment to UN Women’s mission and vision.
• Able to work effectively within a team.
• Displays cultural and gender sensitivity and adaptability.
• Able to multi-task and juggle competing demands.
• Can assess and prioritize work needs quickly.
• Able to relate to external partners, including other international organizations and agencies, NGOs, grassroots community groups, etc.

Functional Competencies

• Sound expertise in gender equality and women’s empowerment, including on women’s political participation
• Communications or knowledge management experience an advantage.
• Academic and practical research experience.
• Fluent in Microsoft word, excel, e-mail, web-based applications and databases.
• Demonstrated leadership and personal examples of promoting knowledge management and a professional learning environment.
• Outstanding networking, team-building, organizational and communication skills.
• Capacity to work with diverse partners including governments, donors and civil society.
• Ability to work effectively and harmoniously with people from varied cultures and professional backgrounds.
• Results based management skills.
• Ability to produce well-written documents demonstrating excellent interpersonal communication skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A master’s degree in Gender Studies, Gender and Development, Development Studies, Human Rights, Law, Sociology and other related subjects.

Experience:

• 5 years experience in conducting analysis and developing programs and strategies for organizations.
• Experience in working on mentorship, in some capacity, within Ethiopian context;
• The consultant should be able to understand the practical challenges and opportunities of women in leadership in Ethiopia.
• Creativity, strong organizational ability, capacity to deliver on time, excellent presentation skill and be responsive to feedback.

Language:

• Fluency in oral and written Amharic and English is required.