UN WOMEN: Consultant for Regional Scoping Study on Gender Responsive Foreign Policies, Europe and Central Asia, International Consultant, Home-based

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 supports governments, civil society, and regional organizations in translating global norms into coherent regional and national action. Guided by the Strategic Plan for 2026–2029 and Regional Strategic Note for Europe and Central Asia (ECA), UN Women prioritizes strengthening gender-responsive governance and ensuring that women can meaningfully participate in political and public life. More specifically, UN Women’s policy and programme work aims to ensure that all women are able to fully and equally participate in decision-making, and that women and girls benefit from gender-responsive laws, policies, budgets, services, and accountable institutions. Under this portfolio, UN Women also supports Member States in advancing and operationalizing gender-responsive foreign policies. As part of these efforts, UN Women in ECA has produced guidance and resources such as the brief Streamlining the Global Path to Gender Equality: The Role of Feminist Foreign Policy (2023), alongside country-level support including the Analysis of Gender Equality in Foreign Policy in North Macedonia (2024), and has supported Member State led multistakeholder convenings  to offer insights on emerging trends and shared priorities in feminist approaches to foreign policy in the region.

Data from the WPS- Humanitarian Action snapshot [1]in ECA indicates that, while women’s representation in diplomacy has improved over the past two decades, it remains uneven and below parity across the region. Globally, women account for approximately one quarter of ambassadors, with only a few countries reaching or exceeding parity, and similar patterns are reflected across ECA. Although women’s participation in diplomatic and multilateral roles has expanded, contributing to more inclusive decision-making and broader stakeholder engagement, structural barriers, including gender norms, limited access to senior career tracks, and emerging risks such as online harassment, continue to constrain their advancement. As highlighted in the Snapshot, progress remains fragile and uneven, underscoring the need for sustained investment to move beyond numerical gains toward meaningful participation and leadership of women in foreign policy and diplomatic spheres across the region.

Over the last decade, Feminist Foreign Policies (FFP) have emerged with significant ambition to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment through external action. Several Member States in the ECA region have introduced feminist lenses into their foreign policies, reflecting growing global recognition, reaffirmed at CSW69, that gender equality is central to effective and inclusive foreign policy, multilateralism, enforcement of international humanitarian and human rights laws and standards. Importantly, strengthening coherence between FFP and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is essential to ensure that commitments to women’s participation, protection, and leadership are consistently integrated across diplomatic, security, and peacebuilding efforts. As these approaches continue to evolve, they vary widely across regional and national contexts, highlighting the need for context-specific analysis to identify opportunities for stronger alignment and coordinated action.

Against this backdrop, UN Women ECARO will undertake a regional scoping study on gender-responsive foreign policies to better understand the current landscape in the region, identify opportunities and propose actionable recommendations for policy development and implementation. The scoping study is part of UN Women’s broader global efforts to examine the evolving landscape of gender-responsive and feminist foreign policy and contributes to a series of regional analyses worldwide.

The primary objective of the study is to assess the current state of gender equality in foreign policy frameworks in the ECA region, examining progress, trends, perspectives and opportunities over the first decade of FFPs (2014–2024), within the broader context of rising gender backlash and shrinking civic space. It will also provide strategic guidance on operationalizing FFP approaches, ensuring coherence with its strategic vision, expected results, and alignment with thematic priorities, including women’s leadership and WPS in a frame of the UN Women Strategic Note for ECA region. The study will cover up to three UN Women programme countries, as well as two other countries in the region that have re