National Advisor conducts assessment of women’s economic empowerment opportunities in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces

Tasks and responsibilities

Background/Context:
UN Women, rooted in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, is committed to eliminating discrimination against women and girls, empowering women and achieving equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries in development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

UN Women recognizes that the economic empowerment of women, including women who face intersecting forms of discrimination, is a direct pathway to gender equality, poverty reduction and inclusive economic growth. Yet, most women in Zimbabwe remain at the margins of economic development efforts with limited income security, few decent employment opportunities and less economic autonomy. The situation is exacerbated by declining funding for gender equality and women’s empowerment in many countries, including Zimbabwe. It is against this backdrop that UN Women in Zimbabwe, through its women’s economic empowerment initiatives, works with multiple stakeholders, including the private sector, the Government of Zimbabwe, development partners and other stakeholders, to enable women to meaningfully contribute to and benefit from economic opportunities in Zimbabwe.

UN Women further recognizes that data gaps make it difficult for women-owned enterprises to tap into the economic opportunities available to them and for relevant stakeholders in the public and private sectors to actively unlock more opportunities for optimal use by women-owned enterprises. The gaps exist despite increasing calls to produce, analyze and use gender statistics, sex-disaggregated data and knowledge to inform policymaking, advocacy and accountability for delivering results on gender equality and women’s empowerment. In some cases, information is available in administrative data that is rarely further processed and disseminated for use.

Insights from the Ministry of Women, Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development (MWACSMED) and stakeholder consultations on the comprehensive framework for women’s economic empowerment (2024-2030) point to the need to effectively map key economic opportunities for women-owned enterprises in different provinces. In addition, women should be made aware of how best to leverage these opportunities.

Against this backdrop, UN Women intends to engage a consultant to map WEE opportunities in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces. With the support and guidance of the Deputy Country Representative, the M and E Analyst and programme and operational teams, the consultant will report to the Women Economic Empowerment Focal Point, who will be the point of contact for contract and payment issues.

Description of responsibilities/scope of work:
The advisor shall conduct an assessment of the potential for women’s economic empowerment in the provinces of Manicaland and Masvingo.

This exercise involves:
Founding meeting
This activity focuses on the presentation of the initial report, proposed tools, sampling notes, research methods and a roadmap (the research protocol).

Analysis of the findings:
This activity involves conducting analyses of findings using approved business and economic analysis tools, statistical software and a gender analysis framework.

Formulation of the report:
In this phase, the Advisor will focus on developing/writing a report on the identified opportunities for women’s economic empowerment, based on the approved dataset and in line with the UN Women editorial guidelines.

Assessment and validation meeting:
This phase involves multiple stakeholder reviews and will culminate in the final validation exercise for the research report. The validation meeting will be attended by all key stakeholders.

NB* UN Women will arrange the conference facilities and invite stakeholders to this process.