National Consultant - National assessment on the status of gender mainstreaming in major national development programs and mega projects

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.

The Government of Ethiopia has made strong commitments to advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through its national policy frameworks, constitutional guarantees, and ratification of international and regional gender equality instruments, including CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Maputo Protocol, Agenda 2063, and the Sustainable Development Goals. These commitments are further reflected in Ethiopia’s national development priorities, sector policies, and institutional arrangements for promoting gender-responsive governance.

Gender mainstreaming is a key strategy for ensuring that women’s and men’s different needs, priorities, roles, constraints, and opportunities are systematically considered in all stages of development planning and implementation. It requires the integration of gender perspectives into policies, programs, budgets, institutional systems, monitoring frameworks, and accountability mechanisms. In Ethiopia, gender mainstreaming is expected to be implemented across government ministries, sector institutions, regional administrations, and large-scale development programs and projects.

Major national programs and mega projects play a significant role in Ethiopia’s economic transformation and social development. These include large-scale initiatives in sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, industrial development, energy, urban development, transport, irrigation, climate resilience, social protection, employment creation, public service delivery, and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programming. Given their scale, budget, geographic coverage, and long-term development impact, these initiatives have significant potential to advance gender equality, expand women’s economic opportunities, improve access to services, reduce unpaid care burdens, promote women’s leadership and participation, and address structural inequalities.

However, the social economic outcomes of these national development programmes and mega projects cannot be adequately inclusive if gender considerations are not taken into consideration all stages from design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. These gaps may be manifested through lack of sufficient Gender analysis and sex disaggregated data during project design; absence or limited application of gender-responsive budgeting. In some cases, women and women’s organizations may not be meaningfully consulted during planning and implementation. These gaps can limit the contribution of national programs and mega projects to gender equality and may unintentionally reinforce pre-existing inequalities.

The Joint Programme “Strengthening Institutional Capacity of Gender Machineries in Ethiopia” implemented by UN Women and UNFPA Ethiopia Country Offices with financial support from the European Union and the Spanish Agency for International Development aims to strengthen gender mainstreaming systems, institutional capacity, gender statistics, coordination, and accountability mechanisms at the Federal and Regional level. One of the result areas for the joint programme is “enhanced integration of gender perspectives within national programs and projects’’.  As part of this effort, a national assessment will be conducted to examine the status of gender mainstreaming in major national programs and mega projects. The assessment will generate evidence on the extent to which gender perspectives are integrated across the project cycle, identify good practices and institutional bottlenecks, and provide practical recommendations to strengthen gender-responsive design, implementation, financing, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability in large-scale national initiatives.

Major national programs and mega projects influence the allocation of public resources, the delivery of services, access to infrastructure, livelihood opportunities, employment, environmental and social safeguards, and community-level development outcomes. If designed and implemented in a gender-responsive manner, these initiatives can serve as powerful vehicles for accelerating gender equality and women’s empowerment. Conversely, if gender perspectives are not adequately integrated, they may fail to address the specific needs of women and girls, exclude women from decision-making and benefits, or increase existing vulnerabilities. A national assessment is therefore necessary to establish a clear understanding of how gender mainstreaming is currently being applied in major national programs and mega projects. The assessment will examine whether gender analysis is conducted during planning; whether women and girls participate meaningfully in consultation and decision-making processes; whether gender-responsive targets, indicators, and budgets are included; whether implementation arrangements include gender expertise and accountability mechanisms; and whether results are monitored and reported using sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data. The assessment will also identify best practices that can be scaled up, as well as bottlenecks that limit effective gender mainstreaming. These may include limited institutional capacity, weak gender analysis, lack of standardized tools, inadequate budget allocation, insufficient coordination between gender machinery and project-implementing institutions, weak monitoring systems, and limited accountability for gender equality commitments. The findings will be used to inform the development of practical tools, guidance notes, capacity-building packages, accountability mechanisms, and policy recommendations to help ensure that major national programs and mega projects contribute meaningfully to national gender equality and women’s empowerment objectives.

The consultant will be under the overall guidance and supervision of UN Women National Programme Coordinator and UNFPA Ethiopia Programme Specialist, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs and relevant federal institutions. A technical task team may be established to provide guidance, review data collection tools, facilitate access to institutions and documents, and ensure quality assurance throughout the process. 

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work

Purpose and Objectives

Purpose

The purpose of the assignment is to assess the status of gender mainstreaming in major national programs and mega projects in Ethiopia, with a focus on planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, financing, coordination, and accountability systems. The assessment will generate evidence-based findings and actionable recommendations to strengthen the integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment objectives in large-scale national initiatives.

Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of the assessment are to:

• Identify mega projects and national development programmes which will be explored in the assessment in collaboration with UN Women, UNFPA and MoWSA
• Assess the extent to which gender perspectives are integrated in the planning and design of major national programs and mega projects, including the use of gender analysis, gender-sensitive needs assessments, stakeholder consultations, and gender-responsive objectives.
• Examine the integration of gender equality considerations in implementation arrangements, including institutional roles, staffing, gender expertise, community engagement, participation of women and girls, and coordination with gender machineries.
• Assess the extent to which gender-responsive budgeting and financing frameworks are applied in major national programs and mega projects, including allocation and tracking of resources for gender equality results.
• Review monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and learning systems to determine whether they include sex-disaggregated data, gender-sensitive indicators, gender-responsive targets, and mechanisms for tracking outcomes for women and girls.
• Identify best practices, innovations, and successful approaches in integrating gender perspectives into large-scale national programs and mega projects.
• Identify institutional, technical, financial, and coordination bottlenecks that limit effective gender mainstreaming in planning, implementation, monitoring, and accountability systems.
• Assess capacity gaps among relevant institutions and implementing bodies, including knowledge, skills, tools, resources, and institutional systems required for effective gender mainstreaming.
• Generate practical, evidence-based, and context-specific recommendations to strengthen gender mainstreaming in current and future national programs and mega projects.
• Propose a framework or checklist for gender-responsive national programs and mega projects, including minimum standards for planning, implementation, budgeting, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability.

Deliverables

• Prepare an inception report including methodology, workplan, stakeholder engagement strategy, and assessment framework.
• Conduct a comprehensive desk review of policies, programmes, project documents, budgets, reports, evaluations, and relevant literature.
• Map and select major national programmes and mega projects for assessment.
• Develop data collection tools and gender mainstreaming assessment frameworks.
• Select and engage regional data collectors in all regions and city administrations
• Conduct and oversee key informant interviews with government institutions, programme management teams, development partners, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders.
• Conduct and oversee group discussions and consultations where applicable.
• Assess gender mainstreaming across planning, implementation, budgeting, monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and accountability dimensions.
• Develop a gender mainstreaming rating framework for assessed programmes and projects.
• Identify best practices, challenges, bottlenecks, and institutional capacity gaps.
• Develop recommendations and a Gender Mainstreaming Minimum Standards Framework.
• Present findings to stakeholders and facilitate validation processes.
• Finalize and submit the assessment report and accompanying products.

Expected Outcomes

The consultancy is expected to deliver:

• A comprehensive assessment report on the status of gender mainstreaming in major national programmes and mega projects.
• An evidence-based analysis of strengths, gaps, and challenges.
• Documentation of best practices and lessons learned.
• A Gender Mainstreaming Minimum Standards Framework and Assessment Checklist.
• Actionable recommendations to strengthen gender-responsive planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

This is an office-based consultancy. 

Competencies :

Core Values:

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

Core Competencies:

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

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework: 

Functional Competencies:

• Excellent analytical and report-writing skills;
• Strong facilitation and stakeholder engagement skills;
• Demonstrated ability to conduct policy and institutional analysis;
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

Required Qualifications

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree in Gender Studies, Development Studies, Public Policy, Economics, Social Sciences, Monitoring and Evaluation, or a related field is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 7 years of progressively responsible work experience in gender equality and women’s empowerment related initiatives is required.
• Demonstrated experience in conducting assessments, evaluations, policy reviews, or research studies is required.
• Proven expertise in gender mainstreaming and gender-responsive planning and budgeting is required.
• Experience working with government institutions and development partners is required.
• Experience assessing large-scale development programmes, public investment programmes, infrastructure projects, or national development initiatives is required.
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and spreadsheet and database packages, experience in handling of web-based management systems is required.
• Experience in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies is required.
• Previous experience working with UN agencies will be considered an added advantage.

Languages:

• Fluency in English and Amharic is required.
• Knowledge of any other UN official language is an asset.

Statements :

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)

Note: Applicants must ensure that all sections of the application form, including the sections on education and employment history, are completed. If all sections are not completed the application may be disqualified from the recruitment and selection process.