Result of Service

The individual contractor is expected to provide support to the preparation of planned outputs including knowledge products and meetings under the women’s economic empowerment project to support the achievement of its set objectives.

Work Location

UN-House ESCWA

Expected duration

6 Months

Duties and Responsibilities

Background: The Arab region continues to register one of the largest gender gaps. Women’s labor force participation in the region remains low. Various factors can be attributed to the low economic participation of women in the Arab region most important of which are the high involvement of women in unpaid care work and their weak involvement in entrepreneurship. From one side, the uneven distribution of unpaid care work between men and women is particularly marked in the Arab States where women carry out 80 to 90 percent of all unpaid care tasks and spend an average of 4.7 times more time than men on unpaid care tasks. The uneven distribution of unpaid care work constitutes a root cause of women’s social and economic disempowerment in the Arab States, and contributes to the world’s widest gender employment gap, horizontal and vertical job segregation, as well as large gender gaps in earnings, wealth, political representation and decision-making. If current patterns endure and women continue to bear the brunt of unpaid care work, there is a serious risk that gender gaps widen and hard-won achievements in women’s socioeconomic empowerment are reversed. These prevailing large gender gaps are closely linked to the policy and legal frameworks that highly influence the structure of the care economy in the Arab States; the benefits provided to caregivers; and the entrepreneurship environment. Addressing the available policies and legal frameworks is thus crucial to promote women’s economic empowerment in the region and build the resilience of women to future shocks. Against this backdrop, ESCWA started in 2020 implementing a project to promote women’s economic empowerment. The latter focuses on women’s economic empowerment and targets mainly policy and legal frameworks. It seeks to prepare necessary knowledge products to serve as basis to support member States in their efforts to reform and develop sound policy and legal frameworks, strengthen member States’ capacities and provide them with necessary technical assistance to reform existing policies and develop new ones to promote women’s economic empowerment. In the context of its work stream on women’s economic empowerment, ESCWA, in addition to its work on the regional level on the topic, already started various initiatives in several countries including Lebanon, Sudan and Oman and foresee to expand to additional countries following an approach comprising the preparation of knowledge products and organization of capacity building workshops. In light of the above ESCWA seeks to hire an individual contractor to support its work to achieve the implementation of the women’s economic empowerment project. Duties and Responsibilities: The individual contractor is expected to provide research and administrative support to contribute to the successful completion of the project’s outputs including: • National case studies mainly on unpaid care work and care economy; • National dialogue meetings and capacity building workshops on women’s economic empowerment targeting various government institutions in Arab States to support the reform and development of legal and policy frameworks; • Papers and frameworks related to women’s economic empowerment in the arab region; • Regional meetings and consultations to explore concepts related to the regional and national studies and to disseminate their results and findings. The individual contractor is thus expected to undertake the following activities: • Provide research support to undertake necessary literature and desk reviews; • Support the preparation of necessary data collection tools including questionnaires for surveys and guides for interviews and focus groups; • Collect data as necessary and required for the preparation of the knowledge products; • Support the preparation of concepts notes and meetings agendas; • Prepare meetings reports; • Support the organization of national and regional meetings and workshops; • Undertake analysis and draft specific inputs as required; • Prepare draft presentations; • Provide research and administrative support as deemed necessary by the project coordinator.

Qualifications/special skills

A Bachelor’s degree in social and/or gender and/or economic and /or anthropology studies or studies in related areas is required. A Master’s degree in the above fields is desirable. All candidates must submit a copy of the required educational degree. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. A minimum of four years of experience in working on development-related issues in the Arab region is required. Experience in working collecting primary and secondary data is desirable. Experience in working with international organizations is desirable. Experience in working on gender issues is desirable.

Languages

English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat; and Arabic is a working language of ESCWA. For this position, fluency in English is required. Knowledge of Arabic is required. Knowledge of French is desirable. Note: “Fluency” equals a rating of ‘fluent’ in all four areas (speak, read, write, and understand) and “Knowledge of” equals a rating of ‘confident’ in two of the four areas.

Additional Information

Recruitment for this position is on a local basis. The incumbent is required to have the legal right to live and work in the specified working location.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.