UN Women Technical Consultant for Financing for Care - Home Based - India - National Consultant

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’s Country Office, based in New Delhi, India, works to accelerate the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women through the strengthening of strategic partnerships, technical and policy advisory services and advocacy with governmental, inter-governmental and civil society partners.In addition, UN Women CO is also leading and coordinating the UN system’s work on gender equality, including through ensuring accountability for results.

The Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Unit at UN Women India Country Office, leads and implements programs that enhance women’s access to education, skills, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities. A central focus of the WEE Unit is transforming care systems as a strategic pathway for achieving gender equality and women’s economic empowerment by addressing the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work shouldered by women and girls. Recognizing care as both a social and economic imperative, the Unit’s approach focuses on transforming care systems through a full life-cycle lens that ensures the well-being of present and future generations while removing persistent gender inequalities. These efforts span promoting gender-responsive care policies, strengthening care services and ecosystems and supporting women’s leadership in care entrepreneurship. 

Central to this agenda is financing for care, which involves expanding access to affordable, accessible, and quality care services; catalyzing caregiving innovations and scalable, low-cost care models; facilitating increased public and private investments in care infrastructure; and promoting the formalization and professionalization of care work to create decent jobs in care and green economies. UN Women India is supporting national and state governments to develop gender budgets that address the gendered impacts which aligns with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Guided by UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022–2025 and the framework of the TransformCare Investment Initiative Asia-Pacific, these efforts strengthen care ecosystems by building multi-stakeholder partnerships, fostering policy reforms, and contributing directly to the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 5 on gender equality, SDG 8 on decent work, and SDG 10 on reducing inequalities.

In this context UN Women India Office seeks the services of a National Consultant to conduct baseline review of care related schemes and programs and conduct a capacity development workshop and related activities on financing for care in India. 

The assignment will involve i) conducting a baseline desk review of current care-related schemes and programmes across public and private sectors, including CSR-financed initiatives, and identifying key gaps and challenges to inform the development of contextually relevant training modules, ii)  provide meaningful recommendations based on existing global and regional practices/experiences iii)  support the facilitation of training for key stakeholders (state government officials, civil society representatives, private sector actors, and care service providers). The National Consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Country Programme Manager, Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Training Specialist of UN Women Knowledge and Partnership Centre in delivering the assigned tasks.

• Conduct a baseline review (based on secondary literature) of the current status of care-related schemes and programs across the public and private sectors in India, including CSR, identifying key gaps and challenges in financing for care.
• Review existing global and regional training modules on financing for care, including those developed by UN Women, through a gender-sensitive lens, and contextualize them for application in the Indian policy and institutional context.
• Adapt and finalize selected gender training modules and develop accompanying IEC materials to support delivery of the Financing for Care Training Workshop, incorporating relevant content on public, private, and blended financing approaches for care systems.
• Serve as a key facilitator in the training on financing for care.
• Prepare a comprehensive training report, including findings/recommendations from pre- and post-training assessments and develop work plan for UN Women. 
• Develop a policy brief outlining key policy recommendations, capturing insights from the training on strengthening financing for care in India. Ensure the policy brief serves as a reference fo