Consultant to Develop Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Transformative Care Economy Objectives into African Development Bank Operations

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.

Globally, women undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, providing three-quarters of all unpaid care hours. These responsibilities significantly impact women’s participation in the labor market due to unpaid care responsibilities. Women who do enter the paid workforce often face additional barriers such as the gender pay gap due to reduced wages, and limited leadership opportunities due to caregiving responsibilities.  Yet, care work is essential to societies and economies to support the well-being of individuals and communities.  It is estimated that the global monetary value of women’s unpaid care work is $10.8 trillion annually, three times the size of the world’s tech industry. In sub-Saharan Africa women spend 3.4 times more time on unpaid care work than men, limiting their access to education, decent employment, and participation in public life.  If unpaid care work were assigned a monetary value, it would constitute 7.2% of GDP in Ethiopia, 7.9% in Tanzania, and 8.8% in South Africa.  Despite its critical importance, care work remains unrecognized and undervalued, entrenched in patriarchal norms that consider it a woman's duty.

Growing global and regional evidence demonstrates that investments in care systems and care-supportive infrastructure can generate multiple development benefits, including increased labour force participation, improved productivity, enhanced human capital outcomes, job creation, and greater resilience of households and communities. Recognizing these links, governments, development finance institutions, and multilateral development banks are increasingly integrating care considerations into development policies, strategies, and investment portfolios.

This agenda is particularly critical in transition countries and fragile contexts, where conflict, displacement, climate shocks, economic instability, and institutional fragility fundamentally reshape care needs and intensify unpaid care burdens. In these settings, care systems often become disrupted or collapse altogether, while public service delivery weakens and households absorb the resulting deficits. Women and girls frequently act as shock absorbers, taking on increased responsibilities for childcare, elder care, care for injured or displaced family members, water and fuel collection, and household subsistence activities. These intensified care demands often reduce women’s ability to engage in education, income-generating activities, entrepreneurship, and participation in recovery and peacebuilding processes.

At the same time, evidence increasingly shows that strengthening care systems constitutes a strategic investment for resilience and recovery in fragile settings. Care-supportive infrastructure and services, including childcare, health systems, water and sanitation, energy access, social protection, and community-based care models, can reduce household vulnerability, preserve human capital, enable women’s economic participation, and accelerate inclusive recovery. 

The African Development Bank (the Bank) has made significant commitments to advancing gender equality and inclusive growth through its Gender Strategy, Ten Years Strategy, President Sidi Ould Tah’s Four Cardinal Points and sectoral investments in infrastructure, agriculture, water, energy, human capital development, governance, and private sector development. Many of these sectors have direct implications for reducing and redistributing unpaid care work and improving access to quality care services. The Bank recognizes the centrality of gender equality to accelerating inclusive economic growth. 

Despite this strategic relevance, unpaid and paid care economy considerations are not yet systematically reflected across the Bank’s country diagnostics, Country Strategy Papers, project preparation processes, sector work, results frameworks, and portfolio dialogue. This represents a missed opportunity, given that care deficits are a key driver of gender inequality and a constraint to women’s economic participation, productivity, skills development, entrepreneurship, and resilience. If systematically recognized and supported, the care economy—including childcare, early childhood development, health care, elder care, disability-inclusive care, long-term care, and care-supportive infrastructure—can become one of Africa’s fastest-growing areas for decent job creation, especially for women and youth. The Bank therefore has an opportunity to provide practical operational guidance that enables task teams and Regional Member Countries to identify, design, finance, monitor, and scale care-responsive investments across sectors.

UN Women has played a leading role in shaping global and regional discourse on the care economy and supporting countries to develop evidence-based care policies and programmes. Through its global policy leadership, research, capacity-building initiatives, and technical assistance, UN Women has advanced the recognition, reduction, redistribution, representation, and reward (5R Framework) of unpaid care and domestic work as a central pillar of gender equality and inclusive development. UN Women has supported the generation of evidence through time-use surveys, care diagnostics, policy analyses, and macroeconomic assessments, while also providing technical support to governments and development partners to design and implement care-responsive policies, financing frameworks, and investments.

Against this backdrop, the Bank, in partnership with UN Women, seeks to strengthen the systematic integration of care economy considerations across its operations, strategies, and investment portfolio. While many Bank-financed projects already contribute to reducing care responsibilities and expanding access to care-related services, opportunities remain to strengthen the identification, design, monitoring, and financing of care-responsive interventions across sectors.

Objective of the Consultancy

The overall objective of the consultancy is to develop practical, operational guidelines that enable the systematic integration of care economy considerations across the Bank’s strategies, dialogue, and operations. The guidelines will support Bank staff and Regional Member Countries to identify care-related constraints, risks, and opportunities throughout the project cycle; design investments that reduce, redistribute, recognize, reward, and represent care work; expand access to quality care services and care-supportive infrastructure; promote decent care jobs; and strengthen gender equality, inclusive growth, and resilience. The guidelines will include sector-specific entry points, diagnostic questions, screening tools, project design options, sample indicators, case examples, and implementation pathways that position care as both an economic enabler and a resilience-building investment in contexts affected by conflict, climate shocks, displacement, and institutional fragility.

Description of Responsibilities /Scope of Work

Under the guidance of the UN Women Regional Policy Specialist for Women’s Economic Empowerment and in collaboration with the Bank’s Chief Gender Officer, the consultant will develop guidelines for integrating care economy objectives into Bank operations across sectors. The assignment will combine document review, consultations, technical drafting, validation, and preparation of practical tools for use by task teams. This will include:

1. Review relevant Bank strategic and operational instruments, including the Ten-Year Strategy, Gender Strategy, Gender Marker System, Results Measurement Framework, sector strategies, transition and fragility guidance, and relevant documents.
2. Conduct a rapid portfolio and sector strategy scan to identify existing and potential care-related entry points across sectors, including agriculture, energy, water and sanitation, transport, education and skills,  human development, governance, urban development and  private sector development
3. Identify opportunities to integrate care considerations into upstream diagnostics, policy dialogue, project concept notes, appraisal reports, results frameworks, gender analyses, and implementation support.
4. Develop a practical guideline package that includes sector-specific entry points, screening questions,  design options, sample indicators, illustrative theory of change pathways, case studies from the Bank and other development finance institutions, and examples from fragile and transition contexts.
5. Prepare a concise implementation note outlining how the guidelines can be used by Bank task teams, gender specialists, sector departments, regional offices, and Regional Member Countries, including recommendations for capacity building, dissemination, and integration into existing operational processes.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

This is a home-based assignment.

Suggested Structure of the Guidelines

• Strategic rationale: why care matters for inclusive growth and  the Bank’s operational priorities.
• Operational framework: how the 5R framework can be translated into Bank-financed investments 
• Sector guidance:  sectoral entry points,  practical menus and design options  of care-responsive interventions for  sectors  including agriculture, energy, water, transport, education, Human development, private sector and  governance.
• Tools and templates: diagnostic questions, screening checklist, results indicators, risk mitigation prompts, consultation guide, and sample language for project documents.
• Implementation and institutionalization: recommendations for dissemination, staff orientation, integration with existing gender tools, and monitoring of uptake across the portfolio.

Deliverables 

Competencies :

Core Values:

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

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 Values and Competencies Framework: 

Functional Competencies:

• Strong technical expertise in developing operational guidelines, toolkits, and practical guidance for development finance institutions, multilateral organizations, or government institutions.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the care economy, women’s economic empowerment, social protection, labour markets, infrastructure, and gender-responsive public policy.
• Ability to translate analytical evidence into practical project-cycle tools, sector entry points, results indicators, and implementation guidance.
• Experience engaging with operational teams, sector specialists, government counterparts, and development partners through consultations and validation processes.
• Strong research, synthesis, drafting, facilitation, and communication skills, with the ability to produce concise and user-friendly guidance materials.
• Familiarity with MDB operations, project preparation processes, results frameworks, gender marker systems, and work in fragile or transition contexts would be a strong advantage.

Required Qualifications

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree in economics, gender studies, public policy, development studies, international relations or a related field. A PhD is an asset.
• 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/programme management certification would be an added advantage.

Experience:

• Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible experience in gender equality, women’s economic empowerment, care economy policy, labour markets, social protection, infrastructure, or inclusive development.
• Proven experience developing operational guidelines, toolkits, policy guidance, or sector guidance for policymakers, development finance institutions, multilateral organizations, or governments.
• Demonstrated experience applying the care economy agenda, including unpaid care work, paid care work, the 5R framework, care-responsive infrastructure, social protection, and decent work for care workers.
• Experience translating research and policy analysis into practical tools for project design, implementation, monitoring, and results reporting.
• Experience conducting consultations, interviews, validation workshops, and stakeholder engagement with government, multilateral, civil society, and technical partners.
• Experience working in sub-Saharan Africa, with knowledge of fragile and transition contexts, climate resilience, or MDB operations considered an asset.

Languages:

• Fluency in English required;
• Knowledge of French or any other UN official language is an asset.

Statements :

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.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

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.)

Note: Applicants must ensure that all sections of the application form, including the sections on education and employment history, are completed. If all sections are not completed the application may be disqualified from the recruitment and selection process.