Senior Consultant - Mapping Study (Promoting Women's Political Leadership and Governance)

Date of Issue: 10 June 2011

Closing Date: 20 June 2011

SSA Announcement No. UNWOMEN/SRO/2011/006

Job Code Title : Senior Consultant – Mapping Study (Promoting Women’s Political Leadership and Governance)

Organization : UN Women – United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

Direct supervisor : National Program Manager, UNWOMEN Bangladesh

Duty Station : Dhaka, Bangladesh

Type of Contract : SSA

No. of positions : One

Duration : 30 Working Days

1. Background

UN Women South Asia Regional Office launched a three year programme entitled ‘Promoting Women’s Political Leadership and Governance in India and South Asia’ in 2009. The programme aims to empower elected women representatives in local governance to make public policy and resource allocation patterns responsive to women’s human rights. The programme will adopt strategies that include the creation of a body of substantive knowledge which will help in policy advocacy, training and capacity building, coalition building and lobbying to mainstream gender responsive governance in the systems of local governance in 5 countries of South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan). All these approaches will be informed by field research. There are three main components of the programme which are as follows:

§ Training of women to participate in local governments; and Capacity Building of elected women representatives

§ Research on women’s participation in local politics for policy advocacy

§ Institutionalising the research and capacity building tools at a Regional Centre of Excellence

2. Justification

Women’s political participation and increasing accountability to women are fundamental prerequisites for gender equality and genuine democracy. Creating accountability will call for many changes in the governance issues. This will include building leadership of women, creating spaces for participation and decision-making, advocating for special measures to ensure participation of women, mobilisation of women’s groups on access to local resources, sensitising the informal justice system etc. It will also require systematic advocacy for gender responsive budgeting and planning.

Women’s opportunities and public participation have gone through significant changes in Bangladesh in recent decades. Large numbers of women are now members of local government councils which are the hubs for rural and urban development. At the policy level, government has played leadership roles in many policy issues with strong gender equality agenda, e.g., the National Policy for Women’s Advancement, the revised National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR-II), gender responsive budget etc.

Women in Bangladesh have shown gradual improvement in almost all sectors of life based on their own expertise. Leadership by and participation of women have grown in all sectors although the proportion is still low as percentage of population. Representation of Women in local governance structure has been institutionalized paving the way for raising their voices for the people of their constituency despite the limited scope to play an effective role in formulation and implementation of development initiatives at the respective levels.

UN Women Bangladesh Program Office has worked to develop the capacity of elected women representatives in Bangladesh. The primary stakeholders of this initiative were the newly appointed women Vice-Chairs of the sub-district councils as well as the women Member of Parliaments. The orientations were designed to foster their knowledge on women’s needs and issues as well as information required for carrying out their duties as elected representatives.

Bangladesh Program Office has also facilitated capacity development sessions for both the civil society and the government on applying GRB concepts in the framing of the national budget. Currently, a study has been commissioned on the yearly allocations of seven line ministries on gender as well as a review of the process of financial decision-making by these ministries. This will result in identifying the gaps in making gender responsive financial decisions and the bottlenecks in making expenditures as well.

In order to build strategic partnership with development partners and key stakeholders, BPO finds it essential to map out ongoing initiatives in Governance.

3. Objectives of the Consultancy

The objective of this assignment is to develop a holistic understanding of the progress of women in local politics in Bangladesh, the kind of interventions undertaken thus far, the different levels of the government structures at which such interventions have been undertaken, what is the extent of documentation of these interventions, and identify the gaps between demand and interventions where UN Women has a comparative advantage to undertake substantial programme interventions towards the improvement of women’s participation in local governance in Bangladesh.

The assignment will work towards developing a comprehensive and convincing proposal for further funding for a programme on promoting women’s political leadership and governance in Bangladesh.

4. Work Assignment

UN Women is seeking the service of a highly qualified International Senior Consultant with extensive expertise and knowledge in undertaking the mapping study.

Specifically, the Senior Consultant will undertake the following activities:

Ø Mapping ongoing initiatives of government, other UN agencies and different stakeholders through desk reviews.

Ø Conducting interviews and FGDs on locations (Dhaka) to identify appropriate intervention.

Ø Identifying the gaps and design appropriate intervention for Bangladesh Program Office, consult the outline of the findings with Bangladesh Program Office.

Ø Arrange Dissemination workshop based on the findings for the stakeholders.

Ø Incorporate feedbacks from the participants to finalise report.

Ø Validation of identified gaps

Ø Prepare and finalize the Project Proposal in required donor format.

Ø Incorporate feedbacks from Bangladesh Program Office and SARO.

5. Strategy

• The Senior Consultant will present an inception paper at the start of the assignment for a discussion with the stakeholders on the effective means of achieving the deliverables, as well as present his/her own plan of action for the rest of the assignment time period.
• The Senior Consultant will be directly reporting to the National Program Manager, UN Women Bangladesh. The Governance unit in UN Women South Asia Regional Office, New Delhi will give inputs and support as and when required by the Bangladesh program office.

6. Activity Target Group

§ Academic and/or research institutions

§ Key stakeholders in the Government of India

§ Women in local governance

§ Gender equality advocates and activists

7. Programme Location

The activities will be undertaken in Bangladesh.

8. Deliverables

v Inception report

v Report on existing governmental and non-governmental programmes on building capacity of women in local governments in Bangladesh

v 1 Dissemination workshop for all stakeholders based on study findings

v Project proposal for Bangladesh Program Office to be submitted to prospective donor

v Program Proposal

9. Reporting Obligations

v Travel plan will be prepared and submitted by the consultant and each travel will be approved by UN Women. Travel will be reimbursed as per UN Women rules and procedural requirements for travel reimbursement requests.

v A detailed and comprehensive narrative report of all activities (as part of the report include anecdotes that capture the process, partnerships, early bits of lessons learnt, photographs, press coverage, questionnaires, human interest stories, lists of interviewees, video etc) in hard and soft copy will be submitted at the end of the grant period

v An Inception paper outlining the purpose of undertaking this mapping study and the method of undertaking the study at the start of the assignment.

v All knowledge products/press releases produced under this grant must acknowledge the support of UN Women.

v Documentary evidence tracking evidence of use of knowledge products made available

10. Duration of Assignment

Assignment period: 30 Working days ending before 10 August 2011

One month from submission of final deliverables

11. Required Qualifications

1. The Candidate must have good experience and knowledge of issues related to Gender and decentralized Governance; as well as demonstrates experience of organizing workshops, conferences, and seminars.
2. The Candidate must have over 15 years of experience in the development sector.
3. The candidate must have excellent writing skills, and have experience of developing policy documents for advocacy with government officials, and institutions
4. The candidate must show proof of developing project proposals for donor funding
5. The candidate must be highly motivated with ability to work independently with minimum supervision, and to work under pressure and complete tasks by the deadline dates
6. Experience of having worked with the Government of Bangladesh, will be an added advantage
7. The candidate must hold a Master’s degree (as a minimum) in social or political science or doctoral degree or equivalent.

Interested applicants should apply for the vacancy, using the “Personal History Form - P 11” and the latest CV.

Application to this vacancy should be sent to jobs.india@unwomen.org

Please insert SSA Announcement Number in the Subject of the E-mail. Applications without the SSA Number or with the incorrect SSA Number will not be accepted.

NOTE : This announcement is open to Bangladesh Nationals and other Nationalities. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.