National consultant to develop the gender analysis on entrepreneurship in the Republic of Moldova.Vacancy Number: Pr19/01813
Background
Entrepreneurial activity is an important factor in creating and increasing employment opportunities and fuelling economic growth. Everywhere, men are more likely than women to be involved in entrepreneurial activity. Because of the serious gender gap in entrepreneurship in all countries of the region, the issue of women and men’s entrepreneurship has received growing attention among policy makers in the member states of the UNECE. In the Beijing Platform for Action, countries have agreed to foster women’s access to self-employment and entrepreneurship. In the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable development the gender equality is fundamental to delivering on the promises of sustainability, peace and human progress through equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership, women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in economic life, full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, empowering and promotion of the economic inclusion of all, irrespective of sex. Legal framework At the national level, according to the recently approved National Development Strategy Moldova 2030 the women's economic empowerment is to be encouraged by the authorities through the promotion of women entrepreneurship (estimated worth of 28%) programs aimed at enhancing the capacities and knowledge of initiating and developing business, providing mentoring services, offering grants as well as increasing access to credit services. This would be one of the objectives to ensure the incomes’ increase from sustainable sources and mitigation of economic inequalities among women and men. At the sector level, the main strategic document aimed to regulate the entrepreneurial activity in the country is the Strategy on Development of Small and Medium Enterprises for 2012-2020 and its Action Plan, including separate priorities on development of women’s entrepreneurship and actions on its measurement. The 2017-2019 Action Plan for the implementation of EU-RM Association Agreement is targeting specific population groups, such as women and youth, in the entrepreneurial education, start-ups and development. From gender equality perspective, the Law on ensuring equal opportunities for women and men stipulates the equal access to entrepreneurial activity, and the National Strategy on ensuring equality between women and men 2017-2021 envisaged stimulation of entrepreneurship and private initiatives by women. Thus, the appropriate legal framework is in place to enable the authorities in accomplishing the above mentioned objectives and to develop feasible supporting actions and measures. Measurement issues The only official statistics available on entrepreneurial activity in the Republic of Moldova resulted out of the NBS statistical thematic survey as of 2009, which has captured the differences among men- and female-owned enterprises continue to be actively used (and reused), at present, by the public authorities in official papers (strategies, programs, plans) and by the academia and CSOs for research and programming purposes. Since then, in the recent years, there were a few attempts for quantitative and/or qualitative data collection, as alternative to the 2009 NBS data. These were either aimed at identifying the training needs (for managers and employees), ad-hoc questioning of and focus-group discussions with the potential beneficiaries of the launched support programmes as part of their baseline analysis. Or, in 2013 and then in 2016, the World Bank commenced the undertaking of the Enterprise Gender Survey in the Republic of Moldova. Hence, all these initiatives should be treated with accuracy and solely as sociological information, being confident of their methodological sociology approaches which are different of the methods used in the official statistics. Efforts are needed to make available up-to-date reliable statistics in order to provide an adequate basis for analysing entrepreneurship subjects and their potential, contribution of this sector to economic development of the country, and for well-informed and justified policy decisions in the field. In 2018, the second statistical survey on establishments to measure the entrepreneurship from gender perspective in the Republic of Moldova has been conducted by NBS in compliance with the national legal and policy framework as well as the concerned international standards and European norms. Given the above context, in 2019 the UN Joint Project on Strengthening the National Statistical System is targeting to undertake the gender analysis of the entrepreneurship, based on the latest and nationally representative official statistical information, thus increasing the availability of gender statistics and enabling the best use of it by the national stakeholders, either decision-makers and planners within the Moldovan public authorities, or supporting institutions, so that government policy, implementing partners’ planning and programing on gender equality in entrepreneur opportunities is properly informed and evidence-based. Scope of work
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Moldova, through the Project on Strengthening the National Statistical System, is seeking to employ one national consultant with relevant experience in the related fields, to develop the gender analysis on entrepreneurship in the Republic of Moldova. It should be based on the results of the 2018 Survey on Business Development of NBS and is aiming at highlighting useful gender-sensitive evidence, assessing the progress made, suggesting conclusions on produced impact in gender equality, and advising support for policy-making in relevant areas of Government activity and for gender equality in business development per se. The expected knowledge product will consist of a full-fledged analytical paper identifying the main current issues that women- and men-entrepreneurs are facing when initiating a business, as well as when developing this business afterwards. It will refer to determinants for entrepreneurial activity (namely (i) motivations and aspirations, and (ii) entrepreneurial resources and constraints) on one hand, and the resulted outcomes (namely (iii) entrepreneurial participation, and (iv) enterprise performance) on the other hand. These two should have impact on employment creation, growth with poverty reduction, and ultimately on women’s empowerment – these will be described. Moreover, the main goal of the report is to reflect data on prevalence of female and male entrepreneurship by demographic, size and sector dimensions. The gender equality perspective and cross-sector analysis will be the mandatory approaches applied throughout the envisaged analytic work. It will address the core issues critical for the gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, focusing on description of the status of affairs in the fields of entrepreneurship and the most vulnerable or disadvantaged groups/categories of entrepreneurs, analysis of factors and incentives causing such a status, side effects/impact resulted, extent of inequality, discrimination, exclusion or vulnerability and possible solutions to reduce them. Correlation of the analysed entrepreneurship topics with linked issues/areas from the perspective of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be an additional mandatory approach to be integrated into the analysis. The expected output, to be written in user-friendly manner, aims at providing a full set of evidences regarding the actual challenges and perspectives for entrepreneurship development and identify areas which require the diminishing of gender-caused disparities thus ensuring equal access to economic opportunities, independence, productive employment and secured incomes from entrepreneurship for women- and men-entrepreneurs. Ultimately, the produced report is expected to serve for evaluation of current public policies through gender perspective and formulation of the new programmes or plans that advance gender equality and entrepreneurship. Also, the expected results will be used for programming purpose of UN agencies regarding the further support to be provided to the Government on gender equality, women empowerment, evidence-based public policies, equitable services, efficient, effective and responsive public institutions. On behalf of NBS, as the main Project’s partner, the participation and necessary involvement of representatives of divisions on business and social (responsible for gender statistics) statistics will be ensured. The NBS staff will provide the National Consultant with the necessary set of statistical data (disaggregated by all available dimensions) resulted from the 2018 Survey on Business Development, complemented by data from other available sources (official business statistics and administrative sources – linkable via common variables), and cooperate on their interpretation and possible clarifications. Also, the Consultant may use, with diligent accuracy, other alternative (non-statistical) sources for qualitative research. Under the overall supervision of UNDP, in partnership with the Project’s counterpart, the consultant is expected to perform the following main activities:
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:
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. | |||||||||||||||||
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