Call for Consultants to a UN Women and All China Women’s Federation Programme on Chinese Women’s Political Participation

Job Titles: International Consultant and National Consultant

Area of Consultancy: Develop a Guide that outlines International Good Practices on how to monitor Women’s Political Participation, and that outlines how these practices can be localized to China and implemented by ACWF.

Purpose: In close collaboration with UN Women, ACWF and other key stakeholders, provide professional consultant services and technical expertise in drafting the Guide, which will inform ACWF’s work on monitoring and promoting women’s political participation. 

Duty Station: Home-based with 1 week travel to Beijing

Contract Duration: 30 working days over a four month period

Contract Supervision:Ms. Julie Broussard, Country Programme Manager, UN Women

Background Information

UN Women- Fund for Gender Equality

One of the pillars of UN Women’s work is advancing women’s political participation and good governance, to ensure that decision-making processes are participatory, responsive, equitable and inclusive. As such the UN Women multi-donor Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) was launched in 2009 to fast-track commitments to gender equality and support advances in women’s political empowerment at local, national and regional levels through the provision of grants – provided on a competitive basis - to government agencies and civil society organizations to transform legal commitments into tangible actions that have a positive impact on the lives of women and girls around the world.

In its inaugural grant-making cycles (2009-2010), FGE awarded a grant to the All China’s Women’s Federation (ACWF) to implement a four year programme entitled “Equal Participation for Chinese Women”  that aims to enhance Chinese women’s political participation: improving laws and policies to create an institutional environment promoting women’s equal rights; enhancing women’s influence in government, and strengthening government, women’s groups and civil society monitoring of Chinese women’s political participation and rights.

The programme began in December 2010. The total grant amount awarded to ACWF is 2,456,934 US$.

All China’s Women’s Federation

ACWF is the largest national women’s NGO in China.  Its mission is “to represent and to protect women’s rights and interests, and to promote equality between men and women” through integrating gender issues into economic and social development; educating women; representing women and children in the formulation of relevant laws, regulations and policies; and promoting the networking of women of different ethnicities within China and of Chinese women around the world. 

Due to the status of ACWF within China and its access to relevant government agencies through NWCCW, as well as direct linkages to the bodies of the Communist Party, the organization is in an ideal position to promote and advocate for women’s political participation. The organization has long standing presence in the communities that they work in, and vast geographic outreach through the provincial Women’s Federations. This has enabled them to accumulate a great deal of experience in implementing international programmes in cooperation with bilateral and multilateral donors. 

ACWF- China Women’s Political Participation Programme

The goal of the program is that women in three selected provinces at provincial, county and village levels fully realize their rights to political participation embedded in the Women’s Law, the National Women’s Development Programme and Village Committee Law.

UN Women monitors closely the successful implementation of the programme and offers continuous technical support to the ACWF grantee/implementing partner through a dedicated staff (focal point) based in the UN Women China office in Beijing. Additional support is also provided by the Monitoring and Reporting Specialist for FGE Asia Pacific based in UN Women’s office in Bangkok.

Justification

The Mid-Term Evaluation of the Programme, identified that technical support was required in several areas of the CWPP programme, and introducing international promising practices on monitoring WPP and their localization to the Chinese context was one of the identified areas.  To this end, ACWF in partnership with UN Women, seeks to hire an experienced international expert to develop a Monitoring Guide, that provides technical guidance on different strategies and tools that can enhance work on WPP in China. The Monitoring Guide will serve as a practical and user-friendly document that will inform ACWF work on promoting women’s political participation under the FGE funded programme.

For the purposes of the Guide, monitoring WPP will be understood as different mechanisms that map, analyze, evaluate, support, advocate and promote WPP or as defined jointly by ACWF, UN Women and Consultant Team at the start of the consultancy. The Monitoring Guide will look at Special Temporary Measures as well as other kinds of policies, legislation and activities that are supportive to WPP. It will focus on creating an enabling environment to WPP, and looking at how women also can focus on issues beyond education, health and reproduction. The Monitoring Guide will recognize the interconnectedness of women’s political participation and their economic empowerment. Furthermore, based on the introduced promising practices, the Monitoring Guide will provide a set of localized recommendations that will be helpful in ACWF’s work on enhancing Women’s Political Participation.

The experienced international consultant will work closely with a national expert, who will be hired to focus on the localization, specifically focusing on how the international best practices can be localized to the Chinese context. Both the national and international consultant are expected to work closely with ACWF and its key stakeholders- including NWCCW, members from the Women’s Federations in three pilot provinces, and various UN agencies-  in assessing the status quo and future needs to enhance women’s political participation in China. In collaboration with ACWF and UN Women, the two consultants will select case studies from five countries that share common sets of challenges and opportunities to China, and use the experiences from these countries to inform the work of ACWF on monitoring WPP.

Tentative Title

From the Fifth to Half a Sky: Enhancing Women’s Political Participation in China through Experiences from the World

Proposed Outline

1.    Executive Summary

2.    Background and key definitions

3.    Successful strategies for strengthening women’s political participation in other countries in introducing and implementing quotas and monitoring these:

4.    Five country case studies, (including information from the five countries on opportunities and challenges in promoting and monitoring women’s political participation). Tailoring best practices from the 5 case studies to the Chinese context. 

5.    Practical set of recommendations on how best practices could be tailored to Chinese context and more importantly, how their implementation could be efficiently monitored by the All-China Women;’s Federation and other stakeholders, (in the framework of the CWPP programme (short-term) and beyond).

Scope of Work and Specific Tasks

The work of developing the Monitoring Guide is expected to span over a course of 3-4 months, starting from the beginning of May 2014. The ‘Consultancy Team’ will consist of an international consultant and a national consultant, who throughout the consultancy will work in close consultation with UN Women’s Country Programme Manager for China and UN Women’s Program Analyst for the Chinese Women’s Political Participation, in planning the scope of work and performing the specific tasks of this consultancy.

The international consultant will be the ‘team leader’ for the ‘consultancy team’, and have overall responsibility for framing the scope of the work, and ensure that it is in line with international standards. The team leader will also be responsible for supervising the work of the national consultant, ensure that the work is progressing according to set timeframes, and in line with needs identified by UN Women, ACWF and other key stakeholders. Overall budget responsibility rests with the team leader. 

The national consultant is responsible for providing expert advice on how the international practices can be applied to the Chinese context, and in close collaboration with the team leader, will liaise with national stakeholders to ensure that their perspectives have been adequately included in the Monitoring Guide. The national consultants, as per instructions by the team leader and with support from UN Women staff, will be responsible for logistical arrangements during in country visits and facilitate translation services for the end product. 

Specific Tasks

1.    The two consultants are expected to work closely with each other throughout the consultancy, and facilitate meetings to discuss the proposed outline, and agree on roles and responsibilities. The ‘team leader’ will be responsible for documenting the proposed outline, and develop a management matrix for roles and responsibilities for the consultancy team, and share it with UN Women Country Programme Manager and Program Analyst.

2.    The consultancy team will meet with key international partners of the programme, such as UN Women, United Nations Development Programme and UNESCO, to understand the context beyond ACWF and WFPP partners of the programme and to determine the technical needs (1 day).

3.    The consultancy team will host a workshop in Beijing with representatives from the Women Federations’ in the pilot provinces, relevant staff members, ACWF and NWCCW. The ‘team leader’, with support from the national consultant, will be responsible for developing the content and liaising with ACWF in preparation for the meetings. At the meeting the consultancy team will present on international good practices, how these practices can be adapted to the Chinese context, and to explore ideas on how the Monitoring Guide can be developed to be practical and user friendly for all staff (1day).

4.    The consultancy team will also consult with key national stakeholders, such as Chinese gender experts and the gender NGO community. The team leader, in close consultation with UN Women and the national consultant, will be responsible for reaching out to national stakeholders. 

5.    The ‘team leader’ will be responsible for guiding the content of the inception report and will collaborate with the national consultant in drafting different chapters of the Monitoring Guide, this work also includes suggestions for case study countries (both countries that use quotas and countries that don’t). The national consultant will provide advice to the team leader and ensure that the recommendations are appropriate to the Chinese context. In relation to this, the ‘Consultancy Team’ will also collaborate on preparing and presenting their preliminary work to UN Women and ACWF (3 days).

6.    The consultancy team will work closely on conducting a Desk Review (3 days).

7.    The ‘team leader’ will have overall content responsibility for the first draft version of the Monitoring Guide, and based on findings from the stakeholder meetings the consultancy team will provide case studies that are relevant to the Chinese context (12 days) and revise it according to comments from Steering group (5 days)

8.    The team leader, in close consultation with the national consultant, will be responsible for finalizing the document after 2^nd round of comments (5 days). 

9.    The International consultant will be responsible for finalizing the wording of the English version of the Monitoring Guide, whereas the Local Consultant will review Chinese translation carried out by a professional translator.

Management

UN Women Country Programme Manager, Ms. Julie Broussard, will be the direct supervisor of this consultancy.

All the work conducted by the consultant will be managed by UN Women China, in close collaboration with relevant staff at ACWF.

Key stakeholders for the consultancy for the Monitoring Guide are: UN Women, ACWF, UNDP and UNESCO

Deliverables and payment milestones

Remuneration

The consultant will be paid according to UN Women guidelines, and the consultant should indicate their preferred daily rate.

Consultants can either apply as a team or as individuals.

Qualifications for International Consultant

·         Masters degreein gender studies, social or political science, humanities or other related field

•    At least 10 years of working experience in gender equality and Women’s Political Participation

•    Demonstrated experience in developing Monitoring tools for Women’s Political Participation, and advanced knowledge of the application of WPP from around the world

•    Excellent communication, analytical and interpersonal skills

•    Strong work ethic and professional reliability

•    Ability to meet deadlines on time

•    Fluency in English is required

•    Sound understanding of women’s political participation issues in China would be an advantage

Qualifications for National Consultant

•    Master’s Degree in gender studies, social or political science, humanities or other related field

•    At least 5 years of working experience in a gender equality related field, with a focus on Women’s Political Participation

•    Excellent understanding of  Women’s Political Participation issues in China and advanced knowledge of the Chinese governance structure

•    Demonstrated experience of working on Monitoring tools for WPP in the Chinese context, and sound knowledge on the application of WPP from around the world

•    Excellent communication, analytical and interpersonal skills

•    Strong work ethic and professional reliability

•    Ability to meet deadlines on time

•    Fluency in Chinese (Mandarin) necessary, as well as fluency in English 

Application:

·         CV;

·         Cover Letter, which includes requested daily rate.

·         Application to be sent to: unwomen.china@unwomen.org

Deadline for Application: Before midnight April 14^th 2014 (Beijing time)