Gender Equality Regional Advisor, Middle East

The IRC is a global leader in transforming the lives of women and girls. The Gender Equality (GE) Unit is a technical unit at the IRC focused on narrowing the gender gap in humanitarian aid, and ensuring that we contribute to the equality of women and girls in all of our programs – by working to establish a context where men, women, boys, and girls enjoy the same rights and opportunities. The IRC believes there is a symbiotic relationship between how we operate as an organization, and the success of the programming that we deliver and changes we seek to make in local communities. The GE Unit, therefore, is also tasked with partnering with operations departments to ensure that IRC is a gender equitable employer. Together, the relevant departments and the GE team will support the necessary changes to the IRC’s internal policies and practices to promote the equal access to opportunities for all of our clients and staff.

Job Overview/Summary: The Gender Equality (GE) Regional Advisor will be a key member of the GE Unit working in the Middle East region. In this role, the GE Regional Advisor will support efforts for country teams to ensure appropriate and significant gender integration into their internal operations and programs. This position will be based in the regional office in Amman – with significant travel between the countries in the region (Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria).

The position will be responsible for guiding country offices in applying principles of gender equality in all operational policies and practices, and will help country staff to set and achieve meaningful and targeted goals for more gender equitable internal practices. The position will be responsible for designing and implementing gender equality training and leading office-wide initiatives to spark internal culture change and a universal understanding of gender equal practices for the workplace. The GE Regional Advisor may also adapt or develop tools to support gender analysis and program design for the country offices, and support the staff in applying these methods in their work. The position will work to support the documentation and sharing of best GE practices in their country or regional context to enable GE learning and understanding across country staff. The GE Regional Advisor may also be responsible for contributing to special initiatives that advance female national staff, including supporting women’s staff groups, advocacy and research, and collaboration with other organizations and sectors serving refugees. The GE Regional Advisor will report to both the Senior Director of the GE Team and the Middle East Regional Vice-President.

Major Responsibilities:

• Work with regional and country leadership to develop and adapt proven and innovative approaches to promoting and building an inclusive and equal office culture and environment.
• Build GE capacity and understanding in the regional and country offices to ensure adequate knowledge across staff on basic GE principles, mechanisms, and language.
• In collaboration with key regional and country human resources staff, review,modify, design and support implementation of key processes, practices and tools currently used across the regional offices to help guide more gender equitable HR policies and practices – with emphasis on recruitment and retention of female staff. 
• Liaise with regional safety and security advisors, to work for more gender equal country risk analyses and safety trainings to allow for improved recognition of women-specific security concerns.
• Coordinate withTechnical Advisors in the different technical units to support country staff in understanding and applying approaches to delivering more gender equitable and accessible programming.
• Support country program staff to build and use gender sensitive practices across the project cycle including conducting gender analysis, designing gender-sensitive projects and using gender-sensitive monitoring practices.
• Support efforts to build capacity of implementation partners to deliver gender equitable programs.
• Serve as a hub of gender knowledge for the regional and country teams to provide gender technical knowledge and expertise, to monitor new practices, and document the results.This also includes conducting research on available evidence of gender gaps in humanitarian practice in the Middle East region.
• Other gender related support as requested. 

Key Working Relationships:

Direct Reporting: Senior Director, Gender Equality Team

Indirect Reporting: Regional Vice President, Middle East Region

Partnership and Consultation: Regional HR Director, Sectoral and other Technical Advisors including Women’s Protection and Empowerment, and Regional Safety and Security Advisor

Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: Country Directors, Country HR and Security Leads

External:IRC Organizational Partners, Donors, and IASC Cluster Groups

Job Requirements:

Education: Graduate degree in social sciences with concentration on gender or women’s studies preferred; Bachelors Degree required. Background or extensive understanding of humanitarian assistance.

Work Experience: minimum of 5 years of experience in the humanitarian or development sector with proven track record of integrating gender equality outcomes in operations and humanitarian programs.

Field Experience: At least 2 years field experience in humanitarian settings in the Middle East region.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Demonstrated expertise in developing gender analysis and program design tools
• Demonstrated experience/understanding of organizational development and/or HR policies and practices
• Effectiveness in bridging practical guidance and conceptual frameworks
• Experience in developing and administering gender trainings, ability to communicate technical expertise and standards, and implement best practice approaches
• Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to develop positive relationships with local and remote team members at multiple levels in the organization
• Ability to work independently and with multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary teams
• Excellence in oral and written communication skills
• Able to transfer technical knowledge and skills, and transform attitudes to improve gender equality

Language Skills: Proficiency in English and Arabic required