Gender Parity Consultant, focusing on advocacy and communications

Position description

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.

 

As a standard-setting organization, the United Nations has a particular responsibility to lead by example in ensuring the equal and active participation of women at all levels of the UN system. This is also necessary for integrating a gender perspective into UN policies and programmes. UN Women is mandated to lead, coordinate and promote the accountability of the UN system for women’s equal representation.

 

The Charter of the United Nations stipulates that there shall be no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in every capacity and under conditions of equality in the system’s principal and subsidiary organs. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reinforced this principle, stating that there can be no distinction or discrimination on the basis of gender. The United Nations, as the principal international standard-setting institution, bears a special responsibility to lead by example and leave no one behind. It has a pivotal role in supporting the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

 

In this context, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the “System-wide strategy on gender parity” in 2017. This strategy includes recommended actions to reach gender parity at all levels across the System by 2028. It covers, amongst others, action on targets and accountability, special measures, enabling environment, senior appointments, and mission settings.

 

UN Women is committed to supporting the UN system to reach gender parity, based on its mandate to lead, promote and coordinate efforts to advance the full realization of women’s rights and opportunities. The Office leads and coordinates the system-wide network of Gender Focal Points, who work on enhancing gender parity and changing organizational culture in their respective offices.

 

The Office of the Focal Point for Women in the UN System (hereafter ‘the Office’) is mandated to monitor and report the gender parity progress across the UN System. For example, UN Women prepares the Secretary-General’s Report on the Improvement in the Status of Women in the UN System every two years. The Office also administers the UN System-wide Dashboard on Gender Parity to consolidate the data on the representation of women and men of nearly 40 UN agencies. Moreover, the Office leads and coordinates the System-wide Network of Gender Focal Points and supports the implementation of the Enabling Environment Guidelines for the UN System, the Field-specific Enabling Environment Guidelines and more, in order to help create enabling environments. The Office also administers Knowledge Hub on Addressing Sexual Harassment, which is a repository of resources, best practices and tools on the UN system's efforts to prevent and address sexual harassment. The Office does so through organizing capacity building sessions regularly, among all, the Global Annual Meeting, which invites all the Gender Focal Points to share and exchange good practice examples to foster inter-agency knowledge sharing.

 

The Consultant will work under the overall guidance of the Senior Advisor and direct supervision of Gender Parity Specialist and will have regular meetings with the supervisor and other members of the team on topics of direct relevance, particularly in the context of reporting and monitoring on gender parity progress system-wide, tasks related to the network of Gender Focal Points and capacity development and in implementing the Field-specific Enabling Environment Guidelines.

 

In the beginning of the assignment, a work plan will be developed, including expected outputs and success indicators over the reporting period. Informal feedback will be provided on a daily basis or as needed.

 

 

 

Duties and Responsibilities

• Support the internal and external communication for the Secretary-General’s 2023 report on the improvement in the status of women in the UN system, including the inter-governmental negotiations of the General Assembly’s Third Committee;
• Lead and coordinate internal and external communications to promote gender parity, the Enabling Environment Guidelines and other products of the Office, and plan social media content to promote the Secretary-General’s Strategy on Gender Parity, amongst others;
• Support the advocacy for the UN System-wide Dashboard on Gender Parity;
• Support the advocacy for the knowledge sharing platform on addressing sexual harassment as well as peer-to-peer learning dialogues;
• Research, develop, prepare, and design communication products;
• Take notes and draft report on the Global Annual Meeting for UN Gender Focal Points which will take place in October 2023;
• Draft and review articles, talking points and presentations as needed;  
• Liaise closely with relevant UN-Women divisions/units as well as external key partners and stakeholders;
• Lead to ensure brand consistency for all communication products;
• Perform other official duties and special assignments as needed.

 

Deliverables:

• Communication products, including articles, power points and visual aids to advocate for all products of the Office (incl. the SG’s Strategy and SG’s report on the Improvement in the Status of Women across the UN)
• Multimedia products, monitoring, and online content to promote the Field-specific Enabling Environment Guidelines and Enabling Environment Guidelines as well as other products, in support of the Secretary-General’s System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity.
• Collection of best practices related to the Guidelines among the Gender Focal Point network.;

 

 

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

 

Competencies:

Corporate competencies:

• Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct;
• Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work: gender equality;

Functional competencies:

• Strong organizational and planning skills;
• Ability to work well under pressure, and to meet deadlines;
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work as part of a team;
• Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office, Adobe/InDesign software packages.

 

 

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s Degree or equivalent in Communications, Public Relations, Journalism, International Relations, Global Development, Public Policy, Management, Social Sciences, Political Science, Gender/Women’s Studies, or related field;
• A first-level university degree in combination with five additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

 

Experience:

• A minimum of 2 years of related work experience required.

 

Languages:

• Proficiency in oral and written English is required.

 

Qualifications

• Experience in writing, editing, content production and dissemination
• Demonstrated research skills and knowledge on gender equality.
• Excellent organizational and coordination skills.
• Familiarity with UN system or UN Women’s work.
• Familiarity with social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Application instructions

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