Two (2) International Consultants on Women’s Political Empowerment and Leadership Capacity Development

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.

UN Women is the UN’s leading entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, it was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. UN Women is uniquely positioned to work on women’s leadership and political participation. The promotion of women’s political empowerment and leadership is widely regarded as a strength for UN Women. Since its inception, through technical support and expertise, the entity has promoted inclusive political processes and institutions in over 100 countries, directly contributing to electoral and legal reforms, and institutional processes to advance women’s political participation and representation, and strong and established partnerships with national, regional and international organizations that can be leveraged to achieve greater results through synergies and cooperation.

In Ukraine, UN Women is committed to delivering results across strategic priorities, exercising its triple mandate encompassing normative support, UN system coordination, and operational activities to mobilize urgent and sustained action to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. UN Women has long been actively supporting local priority areas in Ukraine from increased political participation to gender mainstreaming in public policy, and economic development.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine which started in February 2022 and expanded upon the war begun in 2014, has exacerbated a wide variety of existing inequities, which women and girls experience in Ukraine. The war’s disproportionate impact on women and girls’ access to human rights, livelihoods, and services, limits their ability to meaningfully participate in decision making. While women’s leadership and decision-making has increased at household and partially at the community levels, this has not been reflected in formal political and decision-making processes. Only 21% of seats in parliament[1] are currently held by women, while 4 of 22 cabinet ministers are women. As a result of the 2020 local elections women won 28% of the seats in the regional councils, 34% in the local councils, 33% in the city councils, and 41% in the village councils[2]. No woman was elected as mayor of a major city[3]. At the same time, today an estimated 10,000 women[4]serve on the frontline and 67,000 women serve in the Armed Forces; 19,000 of them as employees and 48,000 as servicewomen[5]. Women volunteers at the local level, who are often deeply engaged in humanitarian relief for their communities, have been recognized as holding high levels of public trust[6].

The Government of Ukraine has continued to prioritize gender equality and women’s empowerment as part of its EU accession requirements, as well as its international commitments. The first-ever comprehensive State Strategy on Equal Rights and Opportunities of Women and Men by 2030, and its operational action plan, were adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers in August 2022. The Strategy envisions “the balanced representation of women and men in decision making in executive authorities, local self-government bodies, companies and organizations, including through the implementation of positive actions (gender quotas, coaching and mentoring programmes)”, “consultations with citizens’ associations that represent different groups of women and men”, as well as “regular sensitization and training activities on methods and forms of participation in policy making, implementation and evaluation at the national, regional and local levels for different groups of women” . 

As part of its new Strategy for 2025-2029 in Ukraine, UN Women plans to support gender responsive governance and women’s leadership to meaningfully engage in decision-making and participation in political life. In July 2024, UN Women Ukraine hosted an expert mission to conduct a comprehensive mapping exercise of stakeholders in government and non-governmental organizations, and among international development partners, who support women’s participation in political life. To expand this initiative, UN Women Ukrai