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National consultant to develop data-based analytical briefs on participation of women and men in ICT

Vacancy Number: Pr18/01712

Location:Chisinau, Moldova
Application Deadline: 21 May 2018, 09:00 (GMT+2:00)
Application Extended deadline:
28 May 2018, 09:00 (GMT+2:00)
Type of Contract:Individual Contract
Starting date: 28 May 2018
Reference to the project: Strengthening the National Statistical System
Expected Duration of Assignment:to be concluded by the middle of August, 2018
Submission Instructions:

Proposals should be submitted online by pressing the "Apply Online" button no later than 21 May 2018.

Requests for clarification only must be sent by standard electronic communication to the following e-mail: aurelia.spataru@undp.org. UNDP will respond by standard electronic mail and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.

Supporting Documents:
Terms of Reference
Individual Consultant Procurement Notice
Offeror's Letter confirming Interest and Availability
Personal History Form (P11)
UNDP General Conditions of Individual Contract



Background

The recognition of the importance of equality of opportunities and the empowerment of women is explicitly expressed in the international commitments undertaken by Moldova (e.g. CEDAW, Beijing Platform, certain ILO conventions and ITU resolutions, 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, EU-RM Association Agreement), as well as national legal and regulatory framework on gender equality (e.g. Law on the Equality of Opportunities between Women and Men, National Strategy for ensuring equality between women and men and corresponding action plan, etc.).

Gender statistics are the basis of any analysis of socio-economic relations between sexes, they indicate the place and role of women and men in a society, they make possible the formulation of forecasts, defining of targets, monitoring the progress in achievement of gender equality and of broader society development objectives, and they are a valuable tool in raising public awareness. The increased availability, but also use, of sex-disaggregated data is among the objectives and measures of implementation of the Strategy on development of national statistical system.

UN Joint Project on Strengthening the National Statistical System of RM is implemented by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of the Republic of Moldova, in partnership with 5 UN agencies (UNDP, UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF, ILO), and aims at improving data collection, production, dissemination and use of statistical information with particular attention to national needs and official statistics overall conformity with international, in particular EU standards. One of the Statistics Project’s intended results is the improved use of available disaggregated statistics by different categories of data users in particular for evidence-based monitoring of policies, development strategies, programmes, etc.

In 2017, with the Project’s support, an inventory of national statistics that measures women and men’s participation in ICT sector has been undertaken and its completeness and quality has been assessed. The inventory ended up with a set of defined available national ICT-related indicators from gender perspective, accompanied by pertinent description and data set for the last 4 years, identified constraints and data gaps. Also, recommendations were given on further improvement of the existing indicators and production of the new ones to enable the appropriate informing of policies and evidence-based reporting on gender issues in ICT.

Given the above context, one of the UN Joint Project’s targets in 2018 is the increased capacity of the national stakeholders to appropriately use the available statistics for the measurement of gender sensitive phenomena related to ICT. For that, making the best use of the inventoried ICT data, the Project is to deliver a user-friendly analysis and make it publicly available to decision-makers and planners within the Moldovan authorities, to civil society, to social and development partners so that planning, programming and measures addressing gender gaps related to ICT are properly informed, solutions are devised to address these gaps so that women can get an increased access to male dominated professions such as ICT.

Scope of work

Under this assignment the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Moldova through UN Joint Project “Strengthening National Statistical System” is seeking a national consultant to develop a data-based analysis on participation and role of women and men in ICT. It is aiming at highlighting useful evidence, suggesting conclusions and advising support for policy-making in relevant areas of Government activity.

The expected knowledge product will consist of a series of thematic data-based analytical briefs (as separate documents or as integral parts of a single paper) that will cover the 6 areas/fields of the undertaken data inventory: ICT education, Employment, gender pay gap and working conditions in ICT, Research & development in ICT, Entrepreneurship and leadership in ICT, Population’s access to and use of ICT.

The analytical briefs will address the core issues critical for the gender equality and women empowerment in the above fields related to ICT, focusing on description of the status of affairs in the respective fields and the most vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, analysis of factors and determinants causing such a status, side effects/impact resulted, extent of inequality, marginalization, discrimination, exclusion or vulnerability and possible solutions to reduce them.

The gender equality perspective and cross-sector analysis will be mandatory approaches applied throughout the envisaged analytic work. Correlation of the analysed ICT topics with linked issues/areas from the SDGs’ perspective will be made.

As it regards the data to be used for analysis, priority will be given to available official statistical data produced by NBS and administrative data sources, at national and/or sectoral level. These might be also complemented with other alternative sources for qualitative research. Also, the analysis will be undertaken in a comparative manner (women vs men, women in ICT compared with women in non-ICT sectors, young vs elderly, urban vs rural, etc.) applying dimensions such as age, residence area, education level, employment status, marital status, type of economic activity, occupation, size of company, etc.

The respective analytical briefs should contain recommendations and/or practical measures, to be undertaken by the Government and the civil society in the context of the current national/sector priorities, aimed to create an enabling environment for women and girls to engaging more prominently in ICT and to occupy high-value and high-income jobs in this sector. These would result in narrowing the male-female employment gap and wages gap (gender parity), lowering the vertical gender segregation (gender balance in leadership positions at different levels), increase the number of women entrepreneurs in the ICT sector (economic independence and business performance), skills development and life-long learning (empowerment and career promotion) of women within the sector, better working conditions and flexibility of working time (enabling the reconciling of the professional and personal life). Thus, relevant linkage will be made with key recommendations provided by human rights bodies and instruments, such as UPR, CEDAW, CRC and others.

Target groups of the produced analytical briefs are the government institutions, civil society, think-tanks, academia, media and general public who would need to understand the current role of women in the ICT sector, the reasons which discourage women from entering and remaining in the sector, as well as evidence-based arguments to attract women to choose this sector for their education, income earning and economic empowerment, career growth and personal development. Also, the produced texts are expected to also serve for evaluation of current public policies through gender perspective and formulation of the new programmes or plans that advance gender equality.

The main objective of the activity is to consolidate the capacities of targeted users to access information and develop skills on the use and interpretation of official statistical data in a corresponding and accurate way. Also, the purpose of this effort is to support the dialogue between the main data producer in the country and concerned categories of data users responding to the information needs of the latest.

In order to achieve the envisaged objectives, the contracted consultant, under the overall supervision of the Project manager and in tight cooperation with NBS, will have the following major responsibilities and perform activities:

  1. Undertake a desk review and preparatory activities
  2. Undertake consultations with data producers
  3. Prepare the content and outline of the future data-based analysis, as well as the pertinent data compilation
  4. Develop the data-based descriptive analysis on participation and role of women and men in ICT
  5. Participate in communication and dissemination public presentation of produced knowledge product

For detailed information, please refer to Terms of Reference.

Requirements for experience

Academic Qualifications:

Working Experience:

Competencies and Skills:

Personal Qualities and other requirements:

The United Nations in Moldova is committed to workforce diversity. Women, persons with disabilities, Roma and other ethnic or religious minorities, persons living with HIV, as well as refugees and other non-citizens legally entitled to work in the Republic of Moldova, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Documents to be included

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

1.  Technical Proposal:

2. Personal information (as a detailed CV or as a Personal History Form /P11) including records on past experience in similar projects/assignments and examples of concrete outputs obtained;

3. Financial proposal.

Financial proposal

The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables (i.e. whether payments fall in installments or upon completion of the entire contract). The payment for services provided by the Contractor under the Statistics Project will be made post factum on a lump-sum deliverables basis, as per contract, after the work has been accepted by the Project Manager. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of offers, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including fee per day, number of anticipated working days, etc.).

Travel

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel.  In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources. In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

For the current assignment not travel is required.