Locations: Home Based
Vacancy Type: Individual Consultancy
Job Function: Economic Empowerment
Initial Contract Duration: December 2024 to July 2025
Background:
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.
In recent years, the world has witnessed a dramatic surge in violent conflicts alongside environmental and human-caused catastrophes and crises. The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has tripled over the past decade, and traditional conflicts are aggravated by new threats including climate shocks, global health pandemics and a rising wave of violent extremist groups directly targeting women’s rights. In 2022, the number of women and girls living in conflict-affected countries reached 614 million – an increase of more than 50% higher compared to 2017. In the same year, 387 natural hazards and disasters (an increase of 14% on the last decade) struck 185 million people, causing 30,704 deaths, and disproportionately impacting the lives and well-being of women and girls. In 2023 an estimated 117.3 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict and violence. This marks a rise by over 70% since 2018. Half of the forcibly displaced population are women and girls.
Globally, women are adversely and disproportionately impacted by conflicts and disasters, from life expectancy, to education, health, violence, and nutrition. In Ukraine, as in Myanmar, Sudan, Colombia, Palestine and Yemen – and countless other situations grappling with the devastating consequences of violent conflicts and crises – women and girls suffer disproportionately. In 2024, approximately 150 million women and girls are in need of humanitarian assistance worldwide. UN Women’s efforts to secure peace, safety, rights and economic autonomy for women and girls during humanitarian planning and response and recovery are more critical than ever.
Over the last few decades, important contributions have been made by feminist scholars towards understanding conflict and peace as a complex, iterative, multi-layered, and dynamic social processes, thereby “opening up opportunities to be enriched by a nuanced understanding of gender relations.” Conflicts and humanitarian crises affect men, women, girls, and boys differently due to their different societal roles. Research in active and post-conflict settings has also illustrated that while conflict and disaster is undisputably appalling for women, these periods can sometimes provide a window of opportunity to alter and expand women’s roles as they may take on more economic responsibilities and duties as heads of households, hold greater public responsibilities, and be able to exert greater influence in decision-making processes and political participation. But these shifts do not occur spontaneously. They require the implementation of gender transformative programs and policies.
While significant attention in the international community has been placed on understanding and mitigating the impacts of conflict and disaster on women’s physical and mental health, experiences of violence, and leadership and political participation, relatively less focus has been placed explicitly on what happens to women’s and girls’, men’s and boys’, unpaid and paid care work during these times of social, political and economic upheaval.
Around the world, the unequal organization of care work is underpinned by its social undervaluing and upheld by limiting gender norms of women’s social and economic roles relative to men’s. These gendered disparities in unpaid care work are a profound driver of gendered socioeconomic inequality, restricting women’s and girls’ time and opportunities for education, decent paid work, public life, rest and leisure. During social and economic crises, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the unpaid and underpaid caring labour of women and girls acts as a shock absorber for gaps in essential public services and social protection, especially for communities with limited health and care infrastructure.
The challenges of care provision become particularly acute during conflict and humanitarian crises, where care needs often simultaneously escalate while formal care services and informal care networks in families and communities deteriorate. Women in fragile and conflict-affected settings are estimated to spend nearly four times the amount of their day on unpaid care tasks compared to men. Pervasive gender norms can also be exacerbated. For example, Oxfam research in Yemen in 2016 during the conflict found that men were spending more time at home due to loss of employment, and that many families did not have access to contraceptives. At the same time, community leaders were encouraging women to reproduce because the country needed offspring to recover after the war.
In Ukraine, recent reporting has shown women increasingly taking on jobs previously dominated by men as the mobilization of soldiers depletes the male-dominated work force, leading to a shift in household care dynamics. In refugee camps in Bangladesh, some Rohingya women are taking on new roles previously associated solely with men back in Myanmar, including as brick workers to build roads – a change that is generally accepted within the community provided that women continue to perform their traditional caretaking roles. In Sudan, less than 25% of health facilities are functional in the states hardest hit by the war, raising the question of how people are receiving care and who is now providing it.
Across many conflicts and humanitarian crises, the process of recovery (or the crisis itself) can be an opportunity for challenging perceptions about gender and social roles and re-orienting ideas of social and economic progress. This can include through an active process of ‘patriarchal bargaining’ where women are able to improve their autonomy and decision-making. Yet at the same time, multiple and intersecting factors affect care work dynamics during times of conflict and crisis, making these ‘windows of change’ both fragile and fleeting. Factors directly impacting care work dynamics (positively or negatively) in such contexts include the increased numbers of single, female-headed of household as men are enlisted in combat or recovery efforts; increased numbers of people with injury, disease, physical disability and psychological trauma requiring care; disruption to or destruction of public care services including hospitals and other health facilities that provide maternity, reproductive and mental health care, as well as services providing care for children, people with disabilities and older people; reduced essential services including electricity, water and sanitation; disruption of food sources; and altered livelihoods and employment. A good example of integrating these issues in the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process by UN Women in Colombia demonstrates the importance of gender analysis and programming built on it for effective and transformative work in conflict-affected areas.
Understanding and responding to these care work dynamics through policy, research and programmatic interventions is critical for conflict prevention and crisis mitigation, and peacebuilding and recovery efforts that go beyond gender-responsive to gender-transformative.
Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work
The overall purpose of this consultancy is to support UN Women in strengthening its institutional expertise on addressing care work in the context of conflict and protracted crisis across its triple mandate of normative, operational, and coordination functions. This includes in the broad areas of policy advisory and technical support to Member States, programming, partnerships (including with women’s rights and peacebuilding organizations), and research.
The specific objectives of this consultancy are as follows:
Phase 1: Expert Group Meeting (EGM) preparation
- Support the preparatory work to convene an expert group meeting (EGM) in early 2025 on the topic of care in times of conflict and crisis. This includes through desk research to identify existing approaches, best practices, conceptual framings, resources, tools, evidence, and stakeholders/experts on the topic as well as key knowledge gaps;
- Identification of relevant experts and participants from academia, government and civil society;
- Development of a concept note, agenda and supporting materials for the EGM.
- Development of a background paper (based on the desk review findings) for the EGM.
- Development of a regional case study for the Arab region
- Development of a regional guidance note for the Arab region.
Phase 2: EGM delivery
- Support the delivery of the EGM (likely 2 days, in-person, Jan/Feb 2025, location TBD), including through presentation of background paper and desk review findings and/or moderation of sessions.
Phase 3: EGM outcomes
- Support the development of key outputs from the EGM. This includes a short outcomes summary highlighting key insights and take-aways from the EGM on addressing care in times of conflict and crisis;
- Development of a ‘how-to’ guidance note on programming and policy design to address care work in times of conflict and crisis, including case studies, best practices and key considerations. This includes a stand-alone regional guidance note for the Arab States region.
- Development of recommendations for a research agenda and methodologies and pilot interventions to strengthen the evidence base on this topic, including potential research partnerships.
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