Local Consultant – Research and Gender Statistics Expert (Office Based)

Location : Maputo, MOZAMBIQUE

Application Deadline : 21-Aug-23 (Midnight New York, USA)

Additional Category : Gender Equality

Type of Contract : Individual Contract

Post Level : National Consultant

Languages Required : English Portuguese

Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start)

04-Sep-2023

Duration of Initial Contract : 6 months

Expected Duration of Assignment : 6 months

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works on the elimination of discrimination and violence 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. UN Women provides support to the Government of Mozambique in meeting its gender equality goals and in building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts in Mozambique to ensure commitment to gender equality. Therefore, consolidating the institutional capacity of the Country Office is one of the enablers to increase delivery.

In September 2015, governments united behind the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which features 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets that aim to end poverty, combat inequalities and promote prosperity by 2030 while protecting the environment. The 2030 Agenda sets out a historic and unprecedented level of ambition to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030” (SDG 5) as well as including 37 gender-related targets in 10 other SDGs. It commits to addressing core issues of gender equality such as eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls, eradicating discriminatory laws and constraints on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work and increasing women’s participation in decision-making.

The absence of adequate data can impede progress in creating informed and effective policies. Gender data gaps can be linked to three challenges, namely: 1. Weak policy space, and legal and financial environments, are barriers to progress. In many countries, the production of gender statistics is not specified in statistics laws and policies, and as a result the sector is under-prioritized and under-funded in national budgets.

2. Technical and financial challenges limit the production of gender statistics. Areas such as violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and unpaid care and domestic work, are important to measure but are under-resourced. Also at risk are emerging areas, such as gender and poverty, gender pay gaps and women’s participation in decision-making, where a lot more methodological work is needed.

3. Lack of access to data and limited capacity of users to use gender statistics to inform polices. Where data is available it is not made accessible or shared in user-friendly formats, impeding their use in informing evidence-based advocacy in decision-making. When data is not used to inform policy and advocacy, it leads to low demand, which in turn reduces the incentive to produce gender statistics.

To successfully track the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, a robust and equally ambitious monitoring framework is needed. Significant investments in gender statistics are necessary to ensure that evidence-based policies are devised, the impacts of these policies are assessed and the accountability of policymakers and governments to deliver on these commitments is promoted. Robust indicators and quality data are of critical importance and will determine whether policy efforts are marshalled and whether the goals and targets are achieved or missed.

To support member states in implementing the 2030 Agenda, UN Women’s Flagship Programme Initiative, “Making Every Woman and Girl Count (MEWGC)” aims to affect a radical shift in the availability, accessibility and use of data and statistics on key aspects of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The regional and national components of the MEWGC Programme include a multi-year scope of work with focus on implementing and supporting regional and country activities in East and Southern Africa.

This includes enhancing the linkages between normative and technical work on gender statistics at the regional and national levels in Mozambique in the three inter-related key areas of work:

•  Building a supportive policy and institutional environment for the localization and effective monitoring of the SDGs;
•  Increasing the quality, comparability and regularity of gender statistics to address national data gaps and meet reporting commitments under the SDGs; and
•  Ensuring that gender statistics are accessible to users in governments, civil society, academia and the private sector, to strengthen adequate demand for their production.

In this context, UN Women is seeking the services of a highly qualified consultant to support the entity’s research and data work. The successful consultant will work under direct supervision by the Programme Officer and collaborate closely with the Gender Statistics Specialist based in Nairobi as well as the gender machinery and National Statistics Office in Mozambique.

Objectives of the assignment:

•  Enabling Environment. Promote a supportive policy environment to address institutional constraints and to strengthen policies and practices governing the production and use of gender statistics.
•  Data Production. Support efforts to improve the regular production of gender statistics, including building the technical capacity of the national statistical systems, gender machinery and providing support to improve data collection so that we can better monitor the SDGs.
•  Data Accessibility. Contribute to the improvement of access to data to inform policy advocacy through solutions such as open access, dissemination tools, and user-producer dialogues, so that data users are better able to use gender statistics in policy, programmes and advocacy.
•  Resource mobilization. Contribute to UN Women’s efforts on resource mobilization for research, data collection and knowledge management.

Scope of Work: The Consultant will work under direct supervision of the WEE Programme Officer and overall guidance by the UN Women’s Country Representative.

The incumbent will contribute to the achievement of the UN Women’s Strategic Note “Output 6.1.3 National Capacity is strengthened to produce, analyze, and use gender statistics for policy formulation, planning, monitoring, and reporting on gender equality and women empowerment” and others closely related to or benefitting from gender statistics and research work as a cross-cutting function.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Programme Management and Implementation Support

•  Work to promote the integration of UN Women in existing coordination mechanisms and statistics platforms.
•  Develop the capacity of INE and MGCAS on gender statistics.
•  Contribute with inputs for the ongoing and upcoming UN Women research, assessments and data collection exercises including the reinforcement of methodological aspects.
•  Contribute to the collaborative work with sister UN entities (including UNECA, UNU-WIDER and UNFPA).
•  Assemble briefing materials and prepare power-point and other presentations
•  Identify sources, and gather and compile data and information for the preparation of documents, guidelines, and other material as required;
•  Support and coach implementation partners on routine implementation of gender statistics functions;
•  Collaborate with the M&E Officer for elaboration and implementation of assignments, quarterly and Annual Reporting;
•  Any other tasks as assigned by the office.

2. Act as a Focal Point for the newly established Gender Statistic Task Force (UN, Government and UNECA);

3. Administrative Support

•  Organize events, meetings and workshops;
•  Draft non-substantive correspondence;
•  Maintain and organize up-to-date hard and electronic files for easy access and retrieval. Ensure safekeeping of confidential materials;
•  Create and maintain files of correspondence/documents and electronically received information, and ensure up-to-date filing (Sharepoint and OneDrive).
•  Maintain both hardcopies and electronic copies of the office records and reference files on various subjects;
•  Prepare presentation material/slides in Power-point for presentations for the meetings/workshops and keep all papers ready for meetings;

4.Contribute to partnership building and resource mobilization

•  Participate in and provide inputs to project proposals for resource mobilization.
•  Provide inputs to relevant documentation such as project summaries, conference papers, briefing notes, speech, etc.

Deliverables

•  Roadmap/work plan and proposed approach to implementation of the projects under his/her responsibility.
•  TORs and inputs to ongoing and future research, assessments, and data collection.
•  Conduct a National Dialogue on gender statistics and the status and cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Mozambique.
•  Monthly monitoring reports and activity reports on project activities related to research and data.
•  To enable Country Office seize emerging programming and resource mobilization opportunities related with gender statistics and (including through communication of UN Women’s work).

Work Schedule: Nr

Activities/Deliverable

Monthly Payment Schedule per Deliverables

1

Individual work plan/roadmap

Provided inputs to UN Women’s efforts on resource mobilization (including review of existing draft Prodoc).

Provided inputs on current and upcoming UN Women and partners research, data collection and knowledge management.

By 14 September 2023

2

Regular participation in the regional gender statistics community of practices and in-country coordination forums, collaboration with other UN system interventions (including the UNU-Wider inclusive economic growth research initiatives).

Participation as UN Women’s focal point on the UNECA initiative for the Development of National Gender Monitoring and Reporting Systems.

By 25 September 2023

3

Promote the inclusion of UN Women in the Statistics Trust Fund and other coordination platforms.

Promoted a supportive policy environment to address institutional constraints and to strengthen policies and practices governing the production and use of gender statistics.

By 25 October 2023

4

Support ongoing efforts to improve the regular production of gender statistics, including building the technical capacity of the national statistical systems, gender machinery and providing support to improve data collection for better monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective.

Introduce and or adapt innovative approaches on administrative data (example, Citizen Generated Data, technology facilitated (TF) violence, gender data in humanitarian setting, HIV infection trends among young women and adolescent girls, AGI data collection and methodology, Global guidance VAW administrative data).

By 25 November 2023

5

Contribution to the improvement of access to data to inform policy advocacy through solutions such as open access, dissemination tools, and user-producer dialogues, so that data users are better able to use gender statistics in policy, programmes and advocacy.

By 25 December 2023

6

Supported logistics and provided inputs for the report related with the National Dialogue on the status and cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Mozambique.

Participate in the design and development of database for women owned businesses (WOB) in Mozambique.

By 25 January 2024

Competencies

Core Values:

•  Respect for Diversity
•  Integrity
•  Professionalism

Core Competencies:

•  Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
•  Accountability
•  Creative Problem Solving
•  Effective Communication
•  Inclusive Collaboration
•  Stakeholder Engagement
•  Leading by Example

Functional Competencies

•  Good understanding of national context including the development plans; social protection mechanism and the gender equality situation
•  Strong analytical skills on gender and economic policy and women’s economic empowerment;
•  Strong communications skills in spoken and written English
•  Strong drafting skills and ability to produce a variety of knowledge products for different audiences and purposes
•  Ability to produce impactful communications materials and knowledge products
•  Strong commitment to knowledge-sharing within a multicultural environment
•  Ability to design and deliver training and other capacity building strategies in the area of gender and economics to a variety of audiences
•  Basic project management skill

Required Skills and Experience

Education: Master’s degree or equivalent in Statistics, Demography, Econometrics, Development Economics, International Development or any other relevant field. A first level university degree with a combination of two additional years of experience can be accepted in lieu of advanced degree.

Experience:

•  5 years of progressively responsible experience with research and data collection, processing and analysis.
•  Experience in working in a computer environment using multiple office software packages. Experience in working with ATLAS/Quantum/PRIMAVERA is an advantage.
•  Work experience in administrative support of development programme/project is an advantage.
•  Knowledge on gender issues and women´s empowerment
•  Work experience within UN Women and or the UN system is an asset.
•  Proven experience with socioeconomic policy analysis and mastery of quantitative and qualitative analysis and methods;
•  Experience in drafting quality and timely research reports, policy brief, and position papers.

Language Requirements: Fluency in English and Portuguese (written and spoken) is required.

UNWOMEN is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.