UN Women National Consultant (Technical) - Women Empower India - Home Based, India

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.

Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is an essential element of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the roadmap to a more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable world. The Women’s Economic Empowerment Portfolio in India focusses on strengthening women’s economic rights and agency while creating an enabling environment for decent and safe employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for women in all their diversity. UN Women is implementing an ‘EU’ funded Women Empower India project to advance women’s economic empowerment in India. By promoting decent and safe economic opportunities, policy advocacy, and collaborative efforts including towards addressing discriminatory social norms, the project aims to create positive change for women and girls in all their diversity. The project envisions following result areas:

1. Increased access to safe and decent economic opportunities for women and girls in all their diversity.
2. Enhanced gender transformative policies and decision- making processes to improve women’s access to safe and decent employment and entrepreneurship.
3. Positive gender norms that enable and increase women’s participation in economic and social life promoted.

Two critical area of work focus on:

• enhancing the capacity of private sector companies to implement the UN’ Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) by promoting decent work opportunities for women and integrating a gender perspective in the business environment and practices.
• Providing technical advisory support/capacity building on gender statistics collection and analysis to better inform policies and programmes pertaining to women’s economic empowerment. 

As part of the Women Empower India programme, UN Women India seeks to engage a consultant to provide strategic and technical support for the implementation of two key components—ARISE (Advancing Robust Inclusive Support Ecosystems for Women Entrepreneurs) and the India Corporate Gender Equality Initiative (ICGE). ARISE aims to strengthen and scale India’s women’s entrepreneurship ecosystem by building evidence, improving gender responsiveness within incubators, accelerators, and investors, and fostering city-level coalitions that expand women’s access to finance and enterprise support. ICGE, a data-driven diagnostic and benchmarking framework, seeks to accelerate gender equality within India’s corporate ecosystem by measuring, comparing, and advancing organizational performance on women’s leadership, workplace equality, and inclusive governance. The consultant will work closely with programme teams and partners to operationalize activities under these components—strengthening partnerships with corporates, incubators, accelerators, investors, and government stakeholders; facilitating capacity-building and knowledge-sharing platforms; and supporting data analysis, documentation, and reporting. The consultant will also contribute to programme monitoring, performance tracking, and evidence-based learning to inform implementation and donor reporting.

Under the direct guidance of Country Programme Manager, WEE, the consultant will undertake following activities:

A. Gender Lens Integrated (GLI) Entrepreneurship Development Ecosystem

• Lead the development of the India Gender Lens Integrated Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Landscape Report, consolidating insights on gender inclusion across entrepreneurship, incubation, and investment ecosystems.
• Design and maintain an Ecosystem Directory of Incubators and Accelerators, capturing gender-responsive programming, outreach, and mentorship models.
• Support the creation of a Gender Lens Maturity Index (GLMI) to assess ecosystem institutions’ integration of gender perspectives.
• Frame indicators for a Longitudinal Tracking Study to monitor ecosystem evolution and women’s entrepreneurship outcomes.
• Develop the GLI Champion City Indicator Framework (Preliminary Draft)