Senior Women Economic Empowerment Consultant- Home based

Background

The 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. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The UN Women Liaison Office for the GCC was inaugurated in October 2016, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the UAE General Women's Union, and UN Women, under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, President of the General Women's Union, Supreme Chairperson of the Family Development Foundation, and President of the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood. 

The office was established with the aim to leverage the UAE’s progress on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE) as a model that can be replicated. The office is also mandated to act as a hub for resource mobilization from the GCC countries to secure funding for global flagship programs of UN Women and other initiatives. The office has strong programmatic focus on women’s economic empowerment the women peace and security agenda and has been working on several project and initiatives on that regard. Therefore, UN Women LO for the GCC seeks to hire a consultant to support the office efforts in strengthening its women’s economic empowerment portfolio with a special focus on initiatives related to climate change and green economy.

Reporting to the Head of the Liaison Office for the GCC, the Senior Women Economic Empowerment Consultant will provide strategic and policy guidance to the women economic empowerment portfolio as follow. 

Duties and Responsibilities

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Provide substantial technical support on women’s economic empowerment (WEE) intervention planning and implementation, including proposal development and technical guidance.
• Contribute to rapid, multi-stakeholder assessments, and field visits for the identification of appropriate interventions by the UN Women and its partners.
• Oversee analysis of the development landscape and support exploration of viable opportunities and new approaches for UN Women’s strategic engagement with the public and private sectors particularly on WEE with a special focus on climate change and green economy.
• Develop Women's Economic Empowerment Strategy for the GCC LO.
• Identify and support follow-up on strategic funding opportunities to partner to advance women’s economic empowerment agenda.
• Provide strategic advice to management of the LO on engagement with private sector entities and advancing UN Women’s WEE agenda.
• Provide advice and mobilize technical resources to support the development of MOUs and agreements with key donors to support the government efforts in the achievement of WEE agenda.
• Support the design and negotiation of partnership proposals, joint strategies, or MOUs in line with UN Women’s standards, processes, and external regulations. 
• Provide technical support to the women economic empowerment agenda and the advancement of the WEPs. This is specifically through identifying capacity building needs and supporting partners through technical assistance, mentoring, training, cross-partner learning, and capacity development initiatives.
• Provide technical support in conducting meetings and conferences on issues related to WEE.
• Prepare briefing documents, talking points for meetings, reports, and presentations to advance partnership and resource mobilization objectives. 

Deliverables

• Monthly updates on progress made on the duties and responsibilities.

Financial arrangements:

Payment will be disbursed on a monthly basis upon receipt of the monthly updates on deliverables reviewed and approved by UN Women within one week of submission.

Travel:

This is a Home-based consultancy assignment in Abu Dhabi, UAE with no travel need is foreseen, however, if there emerges any travel need, UN Women Liaison office for the GCC will organize the logistics: Airfare, Daily Substance Allowance, and Terminal Expenses separately in line with UN Women Travel policy for consultants (non-staff). For local official events and meetings in UAE, the consultant will need to bear all ground transportation costs and secure transportation at their own arrangements.

Competencies

Core Values:

Core Values/Guiding Principles

Integrity:

• Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN 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.

Core competencies

Writing skills:

• Demonstrates strong writing skills, particularly the ability to present persuasive, coherent, and well-founded arguments,
• Has ability to write in a style that is accessible to a broad audience of policymakers, academics, and activists.

Work ethics:

• Reliably takes action to honor commitments; takes international outlook in decision-making.

Intellectual Qualities:

• Possesses good grasp of development policy issues,
• Demonstrates analytical rigor, intellectual creativity and contributes original ideas,
• Maintains open-minded attitude towards new ideas.

Working in teams:

• Contributes to team spirit, inspires, and motivates staff and colleagues at all levels,
• Demonstrates willingness to integrate ideas of others into own thinking,
• Remains composed under stress,
• Manages moods and creates positive attitude in the team even in times of crisis.

Results Orientation in Process:

• Demonstrates drive to achieve results in timely manner and to seek and find solutions to any problems encountered,
• Makes efficient use of available resources,
• Demonstrates ability to multitask.

Communication skills:

• Has ability to communicate clearly and persuasively,
• Demonstrates ability to build consensus and expresses own ideas openly and frankly without jeopardizing rapport with colleagues.
• Innovation and marketing of new approaches:
• Generates new ideas, seeks new approaches and introduces and promotes them in the workplace.
• Ability to identify opportunities and builds strong relationships with client and external actors.

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

• Master’s degree or equivalent in economics, business management, social sciences, public administration, international relations, communications, women's studies, or a related field is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with 2 additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 7 years of experience in development work with specific emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment focusing on women economic empowerment.
• Strong networking capabilities and the ability to develop new relationships.
• Proven experience in diversity and inclusion, women’s rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Experience with partnership design, development, and management.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience in development, monitoring the implementation and the evaluation of development projects, capacity building and resource mobilization.
• Recognized experience in planning and executing conferences and events on WEE.

Language:

• Proficiency in written and spoken English.
• Arabic Language is an asset.

Submission of application

Interested candidates are requested to submit electronic application by the deadline indicated in the post by submitting the following:

• UN Women’s Personal History form (P11) accessed through this link  P11 form.  Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.
• Letter of Interest containing the statement on candidate's experience in the field of recruitment.
• Please note that only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.