Senior International Consultant (Feminist Economist)

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. In Nepal, UN Women focuses on strengthening women’s voice, agency and leadership across sectors to advance women’s rights, provide space for women’s meaningful participation, and contribute to tangible differences in their lives. Under the overarching Nepal Country Office’s Strategic Note (SN) for the period 2018-2022, UN Women focuses on two programmatic areas, inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment.

In prioritizing inclusive governance, UN Women Nepal seeks to advance women’s political empowerment, leadership and enhance women’s access to justice in Nepal’s federal structure. Towards this goal, UN Women works with elected officials and all levels of the government. The approach extends beyond policy and law reform, to implementation and monitoring of policies, supporting the development of plans and budgets, enhancing the capacity of key government officials, and promoting gender equality and social inclusion in local governance mechanisms. In addition, UN Women works together with excluded groups to support their active participation and enable their voices to be heard. UN Women also seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment by promoting increased income security, better jobs and economic independence of women and girls, especially those from vulnerable and excluded groups. For this purpose, UN Women works towards enabling environment at home and in the community by addressing discriminatory social and economic norms and structural barriers, to ensure gender-responsiveness in the development and implementation of macroeconomic and sectoral policies, and to leverage women’s income generation capacity for advancing their empowerment and leadership. Throughout its work, UN Women seeks to contribute to transforming discriminatory social norms and eliminating harmful practices and behaviours, including violence against women. All the above contribute to fulfilling Nepal's obligations to international treaties and commitments, including regular reporting on progress related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Beijing Platform for Action and to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). 

On inclusive governance, UN Women Nepal, in collaboration with governments, development partners, other UN agencies, and civil society, is supporting a new federal system to contribute to a more enabling environment for gender responsive local governance. Further development of UN Women Nepal programming will benefit from review and summarizing of political developments and other ongoing initiatives to support provincial and local governments, field missions to potential and existing programme sites, consultations with key stakeholders, and synthesis of key insights from diverse assessments being undertaken into capacities and needs of provincial and local governments and officials. Likewise on Women’s economic empowerment, UN Women Nepal seeks to engage in macro-economic policy discussion and analysis from feminist economist lens to facilitate creation of gender responsive budgeting and macro-economic policies. Also, building on the continued efforts in evidence-based policy/public advocacy for transformational change in social and economic norms, UN Women continues to produce quality knowledge products on relevant issues such as women’s unpaid work and care economy, and engage federal and local governments, civil society development partners and other UN agencies in advocacy initiatives.

The experience from COVID 19 showed that the crises have differential impact on women and excluded groups and consequently NCO had an opportunity to adapt its programmatic interventions to respond to the evolving context. Building on this experience of need to respond to differential needs of women and considering the fact that the gender-blind policies have always failed to take into account different policy outcome for women and excluded groups, NCO seeks to streamline its efforts by engaging deeper in macro-economic policies from feminist perspective for broader impact.

Thus, to enhance its efforts, UN Women Nepal is seeking to engage a Senior Feminist Economist (International Consultant) on a retainer bases to support the Country Office’s programming on inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment programmes. In close collaboration with programme teams, the International Consultant will be responsible to analyze relevant policies, social data and trends, and provide analytical advisory services and technical inputs to UN Women Nepal Country Office on development issues and policies, particularly gender responsive budgeting, public financing and other macro-economic policies to enhance the strategic impact of UN Women’s interventions in line with the strategic note and United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Technical inputs, reviews and strategic advice to strengthen programmatic approaches[NS1] /interventions from a feminist lens through review of programme/project documents, UN Women’s new Strategic Note, draft reports, TORs, thematic papers as well as key strategy papers.

2. Preparation of policy briefs or policy papers to contribute to knowledge building of UN Women Nepal by providing technical reviews and strategic advice.

3. Quality assurance of knowledge products / research studies and sharing best practices and lessons learned from global and regional experiences on gender-responsive macroeconomic policy development, GRB and other issues related to inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment.

4. Design/ convene/ participate in various thematic dialogues, consultations, expert group and multi stakeholder meetings/workshop on policy debates on relevant issues for knowledge building and public advocacy related to inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment as and when required to provide technical support in events and strengthen UN Women’s coordination with other stakeholders

5. Design and conduct capacity development initiatives (including trainings and workshops) for UN Women staffs, government officials, elected representatives, civil society partners and/or development partners in Nepal on issues related to inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment.

6. Develop substantive briefs or concept notes on possible areas of resource mobilization on inclusive governance and women’s economic empowerment, including COVID 19 related response and recovery efforts.

7. Provide technical inputs to strengthen proposal/ concept notes for resource mobilization from a feminist lens and equality perspective

Inputs

• UN Women will provide reference materials and facilitate coordination with key stakeholders.
• The consultant is expected to work remotely. UN Women can give access the UN Women office for printing of relevant documents during the assignment, if required.
• The consultant will be required to provide their own local communications such as SIM cards and mobile phone.
• It is the Consultant’s responsibility to arrange private insurance.
• It is mandatory for the consultant to participate in a UN security briefing and to follow UN security rules and guidance.
• The Consultant will be required to provide a Statement of Good Health, endorsed by a certified Medical Practitioner.

Duration of the assignment and duty station   

This is a home-based assignment for 1 year (1 August September 2022- 30 July August 2023) on retainer basis (as and when required) with a maximum of 50 working days. The assignment may also include field missions outside of Kathmanduto Nepal and participation in meetings and consultations in Kathmandu.

UN Women will not be committed to purchasing any minimum quantity of the Services, and purchases will be made only if there is an actual requirement upon the issuance of a Purchase Order based on this retainer contract. UN Women shall not be liable for any cost in the event that no purchases are made under this retainer contract.

Schedule of payments

Payment will be made on the basis of quality of the work actually delivered upon certification of satisfactory performance by the supervisor. A work plan for the service delivery will be discussed and reconfirmed upon the signing of a contract. The contractor’s performance will be evaluated against such criteria as: timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communications, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered.

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles

• Integrity: Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct;
• Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
• Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity: Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Functional Competencies

• Ethics and Values: Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity.
• Organizational Awareness: Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
• Development and Innovation: Take charge of self-development and take initiative.
• Work in teams: Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multiethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

Required Skills and Experience

• Master’s degree in Economics, Gender and Development Studies, Political Science, Economics, Social Science, or any other related field of studies.
• A minimum of 15 years of professional experience in working with gender equality and women’s empowerment and inclusive governance.
• Proven expertise in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment. 
• Previous experience working with different levels of government, civil society and development partners.  Experience working with the UN system is a considerable asset.  
• Fluency in written and oral English is required
• Ability to handle documents and the information contained therein with strictest confidentiality is a non-negotiable requirement.

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS?

Interested individual consultants must submit the following 4 documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications, any missing documents will disqualified. 

1. Expression of interest explaining why you are interested to this position and what professional skills and experiences make you a strong candidate.

2. UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded:  http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment  

3. A separate page of financial proposal indicating per day (1 day = 8 hours) consultancy fees. Please note that DSA for field missions will be paid at UN rates and travel, booked in compliance with UN Women policy, will be reimbursed at actual cost so these costs do not need to be included in the financial proposal. 

4. A sample of original writing produced within the last three months where the applicant is the lead author

Evaluation criteria

A two-stage procedure is applied in evaluating the proposals. 

1. The technical proposal is assessed first based on the qualifications listed above.  Those proposals that meet a minimum threshold (scoring at least 70% on the technical assessment) including possible interview, will be considered further, including through assessment of the financial proposal.

Technical evaluation criteria (including minimum qualifications):

• Master’s degree in Economics, Gender and Development Studies, Political Science, Social Science, or any other related field of studies. (10 points)
• A minimum of 15 years of professional experience in working with gender equality and women’s empowerment. (20 points)
• Proven expertise in the area of feminist economics and inclusive governance (20 points)
• Previous experience working with different levels of government, civil society and development partners.  Experience working with the UN system is a considerable asset. (20 points)
• Writing sample. (30 points)

1. The financial proposal of candidates who meet the technical assessment threshold will be evaluated. The financial assessment will count as 30% of the total points.  In this methodology, the maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

A formula is as follows:

p = y (µ/z)

Where:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated