International Consultant for Gender Responsive Budgeting

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 third 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 that are fundamental to women’s equality, and that 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 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 made significant contribution towards 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 application of GRB, UN Women has built partnerships with diverse 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 Multi Country Office (MCO), based in New Delhi, India, covers four countries of the region, i.e., India, Bhutan, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. UN Women India MCO is currently implementing a project with the objective of identifying strategies and operational approaches to strengthen on-going efforts on GRB in India and Sri Lanka, at the national and sub-national levels.

Insights generated from this project will enable key stakeholders at the national and state level to accelerate their efforts to ensure that women’s priorities are adequately reflected in national budgeting processes, and to make concrete changes for adequate resource allocation towards women’s priorities. The focus areas of the project for Sri Lanka are the following:

• Establishing/strengthening institutional mechanisms for GRB.
• Generating evidence on how sectoral policies/programmes could be made more gender responsive.
• Enhancing capacities of officials for sustaining change.

Within this context, UN Women Sri Lanka seeks the services of a Technical Expert to undertake GRB analysis of policies and programmes from the perspective in two selected sectors, which have been selected  in consultation with the government of Sri Lanka: rural employment, and vocational training and skills development – with a focus on marginalised groups of women such as women-headed households. The research will aim to generate/strengthen evidence on the existing gaps in policy/programme design, budgeting, implementation and evaluation from a gender perspective. The focus will be to ensure that the analysis is conducted from the lens of most Marginalised women. The findings of the analysis will be used to enhance capacities of officials at the national and state level to engender institutional planning and budgetary processes.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the guidance and direct supervision of the Programme Analyst, UN Women Sri Lanka, the Technical Expert will lead research on identified two sectors using the GRB framework to analyse policies/schemes/programmes. In both sectors, the analysis will primarily focus on conducting a thorough desk review of programmes/schemes of the relevant departments from a gender lens, analysis of the existing data and providing concrete recommendations to ensure that policies and programmes respond to the specific concerns of sectors with specifics focus on marginalized women. Capturing of primary data from the field will be required. The research should also capture perceptions of officials at national and sub-national levels of government. The Technical Expert will also be required to enhance capacities of relevant officials using the evidence generated on GRB analysis.

The Technical Expert will work with the teams of UN Women Sri Lanka and government of Sri Lanka to ensure that the research includes diverse perspectives and meets the required standards of quality, within the given time and cost specifications. 

The Technical Expert will undertake the following tasks:

• Organise inception meetings to discuss the scope of work with relevant research partners including concerned government stakeholders. Develop a mixed-methods methodology note with key tools, for analysing data/inputs for select schemes/programmes of the Government along the planning, budgeting, implementation and evaluation phase/s; specifically ensuring that sex-disaggregated and gender-aware data is captured and analysed. The methodology note on the research study should include brief literature review, key research tools, data analysis, sampling framework etc. Finalise methodology note with inputs from UN Women and Government partners.

• Conduct the research using GRB as a framework to examine the extent to which the policies/programmmes and budgets address the specific concerns of marginalized women in two selected sectors. Develop a draft report capturing key findings and recommendations based on analysis of data and inputs. Finalise the draft report with inputs from UN Women

• Conduct a stakeholder validation workshop soliciting inputs from key Government officials, civil society, development partners and other relevant stakeholders. Develop final reports (separately focusing on two selected sectors) upon incorporation of inputs from the stakeholder validation workshop and UN Women, with key recommendations and way forward for strengthening mechanisms, systems and processes for the two selected sectors. Finalise the report with inputs from UN Women and other concerned stakeholders as required.

• Develop and finalise knowledge products based on the finalized report in consultation with UN Women. (These could include policy briefs, content for infographics etc.) Present research findings at the cross-country learning workshop for Indian and Sri Lankan government officials (to be organised by UN Women).

• Design a capacity building programme for government officials at the national and sub-national levels on application of GRB specifically related to the two selected sectors, based on the research. This includes developing the agenda and methodology, workshop modules, handouts, materials or other resources to be given to participants. Finalise capacity building agenda, methodology and training material incorporating UN Women’s feedback.

• Conduct capacity building workshops for government officials at national and sub-national levels. (Logistical support for the events will be provided by UN Women team.) Prepare an overall report on the capacity building programme including summary of the proceedings, lessons learnt, good practices/case studies (if any), feedback from participants, and recommendations for future programmes. Finalise the report based on UN Women’s feedback.

Expected Deliverables:

• Finalised methodology note on the research study, including literature review, key research tools, data analysis, sampling, etc – 12 days;
• Finalised draft report – 22 days;
• Final report with key recommendations and way forward for strengthening mechanisms, systems and processes for the two selected sectors – 7 days;
• Finalised knowledge products based on GRB analysis of selected sectors. Finalised Power-point presentation of key findings and recommendations – 5 days;
• Finalised workshop agenda, methodology, training materials – 7 days;
• Capacity building programmes completed. Finalised report on the capacity building programmes conducted – 7 days.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates commitment to UN Women’s mission, vision and values;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge Management and Learning:

• Shares knowledge and experience;
• Actively works towards continuing personal learning, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.

Development and Operational Effectiveness:

• Ability to perform a variety of specialized tasks related to design, planning and implementation of programme, managing data, reporting;
• Ability to provide input to and use new IT based systems.

Leadership and Self-Management:

• Focuses on result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Remains calm, in control even under pressure;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Good understanding of gender and development in South Asia;
• Demonstrable ability to work in a team;
• Ability to work under pressure;
• Good writing and communication skills;
• Excellent computer literacy and skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

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

Experience:

• Minimum five years of experience at the national/state level working with development projects including hands-on experience of design, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of projects on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.
• Experience on financial/budgetary data analysis, statistics and quantitative and qualitative research is required.
• Experience of working with national or sub-national governments on GRB is required.
• Programmatic and/or research experience related to Sri Lanka and/or the South Asian region is required.

Language:

• Proficiency in English (written and spoken).

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

Interested consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:

• All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs;
• Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment;
• Applications received after the close date will not be accepted;
• Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Evaluation and Selection Criteria:

Criteria for shortlisting of CVs will be based on the following assessment:

• Required degree and qualification (5 points);
• Experience working with national/sub-national government on GRB and financial budgetary data analysis and research relevant to the assignment (10 points);
• Experience of working in Sri Lanka or the South Asian region (5 points).

The evaluation process for selection of the candidate will be based on the following assessment:

• Written Sample (40 points);
• Interview (60 points).

Please Note:

• For an assignment requiring travel, consultants of 65 years or more require full medical examination and statement of fitness to work to engage in the consultancy.
• Due to large number of potential applicants, only competitively selected candidates will be contacted for remaining steps of the selection process.

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.