Job Description 

Agency                                                  UNDP 

Title                                                        Policy Specialist (Gender) 

Job ID                                                    8334 

Practice Area - Job Family                 Poverty Reduction - GENDER 

Vacancy End Date                               (Midnight New York, USA) 06/03/2017 

Time Left                                              13d 7h 4m 

Duty Station                                         Panama City, Panama 

Education & Work Experience           I-Master's Level Degree - 7 year(s) experience 

Languages                                           Required:               Spanish

      Desired:                 English

Grade                                                    P4

Vacancy Type                                      FTA International 

Posting Type                                       External

Bureau                                                 Development Policy

Contract Duration                              1 Year with possibility for extension

Background

 

UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP has a longstanding commitment to mainstreaming gender equality and promoting women’s empowerment in its work. As the UN’s lead development agency, with extensive field presence, UNDP has facilitated the integration of gender equality in the work of Country Offices through core and non-core fund investments and has initiated and implemented numerous innovative initiatives, some of them in partnership with UN Women, that support both government and civil society work on gender issues

 

UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017 is aligned with UNDP’s Strategic Plan and seeks to ensure that the gender equality be central to the organization’s strategic vision and planning for the next four years. In order for UNDP to sustain momentum and achieve measurable gender equality results, the organization has to continue restructuring itself and building its internal capacity to address the gender dimensions in all its work.  

 

The Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan.  BPPS’s staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, South-South and Triangular cooperation initiatives, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas.  BPPS works closely with UNDP’s Crisis Response Unit (CRU) to support emergency and crisis response.  BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDP’s development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working.  BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven including in its programme support efforts. 

 

The Regional Hub in Panama serves 24 country offices in Latin America and the Caribbean region. The overall priorities of the UNDP Regional Centers are to help countries in the region to better achieve development results through: 

 

  • Provision of policy advisory, programme development and technical support services to UNDP country offices; 
  • Implementation of regional programmes;
  • Building of partnerships and the promotion of regional capacity development initiatives.

 

The Regional Hubs are organized along the lines of UNDP practice areas. 

 

Under the overall guidance of the Gender Team Leader in the Regional Hub the Gender Policy Specialist-Poverty is responsible for supporting policy and programme advisory services to the Country Offices and aiding the utilization of the products and tools relevant to the thematic area of Gender. S/he acts in response to requests from country offices and in collaboration with the integration and coordination team. Working to ensure the execution of quality and coherent policy and programme advisory services within their region and across other regions as well as alignment with the Strategic Plan and Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017, the Gender Policy Specialist-Poverty supports the advancement of the mission of the UNDP and increases the accuracy of the monitoring and review of this thematic area. S/he is responsible for performing and contributing to the following:

 

  • Programme Support and Policy Advice; 
  • Policy Research and Development; 
  • Policy Positioning and Advocacy;
  • Partnerships and Resource Mobilization; 
  • Knowledge Management.

 

 

Duties and Responsibilities

 

1. Programme Support and Policy Advice:

 

  • Support integration of technical policy advice into programmes/projects at the country level; 
  • Prepare materials to support the application of integrated multi-disciplinary approaches, including through participation in Development Solutions Teams (DSTs), to meet policy and programming needs in line with corporate guidance and standards;
  • Coordinate organization and conduct of policy events at the regional level hosted or co-hosted by UNDP; 
  • Lead monitoring and reporting against this thematic area of the UNDP Strategic Plan, and Gender Equality Strategy, 2014-2017.
  • Incorporate gender equality and human rights’-based approach in policy and programming work related to democratic governance and gender mainstreaming; and
  • Strengthen internal CO capacity on the use of UNDP corporate practice development frameworks; providing substantive advice and support and organizing capacity development activities; 
  • Provide Quality Assurance to ensure alignment with global development policies, norms and standards;
  • Contribute to the formulation of regional and CO programmes drawing upon lessons from programmes and other initiatives in the region and from global experiences; 
  • Support UNDP SURGE for country offices.

 

2. Policy Research and Development:

  • Coordinate research and analysis support from the region for the purpose of producing relevant analysis and guidance on emerging issues of global and regional significance; 
  • Oversee the collection of regional data analysis, case evidence and research findings to distill relevant lessons in support of policy and strategy initiatives development to integrate gender in the democratic governance and gender mainstreaming agendas;
  • Participate in the development of policy initiatives for different contexts on key emerging policy agendas, by drafting applicable documents and preparing presentations;
  • Support the team by ensuring there is data to support the quality assurance of policy services and foster policy innovation in the specific thematic area to enhance programme/project formulation and delivery.
  • Coordinate the development on regional initiatives around poverty and gender issues (e.g. mainstreaming gender into the SDGs, decent work, employment and gender issues; poverty reduction strategies and gender issues; mainstreaming gender into development, economic and poverty related policies, etc.); 
  • Contribute to the development and formulation of global and regional policies, norms and standards in UNDP;
  • Provide on demand high quality service delivery to country offices and regional programmes on gender and poverty issues ensuring professionalism in support – e.g. timelines, responsiveness, quality in deliverables, etc;   
  • Ensure cross-practice approach and cross-regional collaboration; 
  • Coordinate the Gender Associate Experts Network of the RSC.

 

3. Policy Positioning and Advocacy: 

  • Promote and mobilize, foster and strengthen strategic partnerships with UN entities, Regional, sub-regional and global organizations and other relevant institutions and bodies (universities, think tanks, etc.) and nurture those partnerships in support of UNDP initiatives;
  • Draft briefings and speeches for senior staff;
  • Develop analysis and materials to advocate the importance of gender issues in development in relevant fora, including inter-governmental institutions, academia and civil society, with a view to deepen related political commitment and related reforms; and
  • Support team’s engagement in interagency coordination, including cluster teams, in relevant policy areas by providing research insight gender in the democratic governance, access to justice and conflict prevention agendas.

 

4. Partnerships and Resource Mobilization:

  • Develop analysis and materials to support the engagement with regional and global partners;
  • Formulate partnership strategies with UN and external partner institutions, including governments, private sector, academia, NGOs, and CSOs.
  • Develop a resource mobilization plan for the Gender Cluster under corporate guidelines, including to fulfill corporate and donor reporting, advocacy and information-sharing requirements; 
  • Coordinate the identification and effective use of relevant data related to regional external partnerships behind UNDP initiatives, including to fulfill corporate and donor reporting, advocacy and information-sharing requirements (in coordination with other teams and BERA as required); and
  • Coordinate systematization of lessons learned and south-south cooperation 

 

5. Knowledge Management: 

  • Support the coordination of the Gender Community of Practice at the regional level, by providing training, information sharing and networking opportunities; 
  • Development country-oriented support tools addressing specific regional and/or country request and challenges; 
  • Identify key policy-relevant issues and help develop strategies to address them and share them with the organization; 
  • Coordinate Identification and synthesis of best practices and lessons learnt directly linked to country policy goals Including, systematization of projects to be shared within LAC 
  • Coordinate the team’s sound contributions to knowledge networks and communities of practice; 
  • Develop, in consultation with the team leader a communication strategy and oversee the performance and actualization of the Regional Services Center and Gender web sites; 
  • Ensure the systematization, publication, translation and dissemination of all activities; 
  • Reflect the region-wide lessons learnt, best practices and knowledge into UNDP’s strategies in the region; 
  • Manage the Latino America Genera Platform and coordinate the production of the monthly bulletin 
  • Ensure team members keep the Latin America Genera Platform up-to-date library in terms of knowledge products and coordinate responses to requests for information;  
  • Coordinate the organization and conduct of knowledge sharing events; and
  • Perform knowledge extraction, analysis, documentation, codification of results/lessons learned in the specific thematic area, to support knowledge management in the thematic area

 

6. Implementation of regional projects, oversight and support: 

 

  • Ensure effective management of regional initiatives and projects on gender and poverty through effective application and quality control of RBM tools, Atlas management, monitoring achievement of results, coordination of the mandatory and budget re-phasing exercises, closure of projects through review, participates in recruitment processes for Project; 
  • Prepare global and regional on the gender and poverty activities and projects; 

 

 

 

 

Competencies

 

Corporate competencies:

 

Innovation:

  • Ability to make new and useful ideas work.

Leadership:

  • Ability to persuade others to follow.

People Management:

  • Ability to improve performance and satisfaction.

Communication:

  • Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform.

Delivery:

  • Ability to get things done.

 

Technical/Functional

 

Primary:

 

Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment:

  • Knowledge of systems for gender and poverty, SDGs and gender gender sensitive capacity development, gender and democtratic governance and interagency collaboration and ability to apply to strategic and/or practical situations.

Gender mainstreaming and analysis:

  • Knowledge of gender issues and the ability to apply to strategic and/or practical situations, including analysis of projects and programmes from a gender perspective. Knolwledge of strategies to support government institutions to design approaches to mainstream gender into their public policies.

Analysis:

  • Ability to research, discover trends, and make recommendations pertaining gender and poverty and mainstreaming issues. 

 

Partnerships:

  • Ability to engage with other agencies, donors, and other development stakeholders and forge productive working relationships. 

Knowledge Management:

  • Ability to capture, develop, share and effectively use information and knowledge.
  • Ability to design and implement communication and networking strategies and develop knowledge products and tools for country offices and other stakeholders.

Secondary:

 

Project and Programme Management:

  • Ability to plan, organize, and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals.

Report and Brief Writing :

  • Ability to prepare quality reports and briefs.
 

Required Skills and Experience

 

Education:

 

  • Advanced university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in gender in development, economics, business administration, social sciences, political sciences or related disciplines.

 

Experience:

  • A minimum of 7 years of relevant experience at the national and international level in gender and development ; of which 3 years’ experience on gender and poverty and gender mainstreaming;
  • Experience in working with the UN system or a multi-lateral organization, preferably UNDP;
  • Work experience in a developing country, LAC region highly desirable; 
  • Substantial experience in working with governments and international organizations on gender development issues; 
  • Demonstrable experience in synthetizing, researching and drafting policy documents and policy research;
  • Experience in leading/managing knowledge product development and dissemination; 
  • Experience in providing technical advisory services to UN, UNDP, Government and other actors on gender mainstreaming; 
  • Experience with UNDP project cycle and general procedures;
  • Knowledge on gender public policies and/or gender mainstreaming is a must; 
  • Knowledge of Communication strategies, drafting communication/information materials and management of web based platforms and information web-based hubs. 

 

Language Requirements:

 

  • Demonstrable Fluency in Spanish, written and spoken is essential.
  • Knowledge of English (written and spoken) is highly desirable.

 

 

 

Disclaimer

 

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