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 UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to implement these standards. It stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on five priority areas: increasing women’s leadership and participation in decision-making; ending violence against women; engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting. UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing gender equality.
Within the framework of its Women’s Leadership and Decision-making (WLD) portfolio, UN Women, with the generous support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), is implementing the “Women’s Increased Leadership for Democracy in Georgia” project. The project was launched in April 2023, with an impact-level goal is to ensure that women and girls in all their diversity fully and equally participate in decision-making and benefit from gender-responsive governance in Georgia. To achieve this goal, the project is structured around two interlinked outcomes, each supported by two respective outputs.
- Output 1.1: Civil society organizations (CSOs) and women leaders, including LNOB women, have enhanced agency, voice, and capacities to lead, monitor, and promote the increased participation of women in political life and decision-making.
- Output 1.2: Increased awareness and sensitization of communities (including men), the media, and opinion-makers is generated about women’s effective roles in leadership and decision-making as part of gender-responsive governance.
- Output 2.1: Laws, policies, and capacities for women’s political empowerment and gender mainstreaming are developed and implemented at the national and local levels.
- Output 2.2: More and better-quality data and analysis are available to promote and track the progress of gender equality and women’s political empowerment.
Purpose and the Use of Evaluation
Upon the project completion, as established in the project document, a mandatory external final evaluation is to be conducted by UN Women for accountability and learning purposes. The final evaluation will be designed as a summative project evaluation to support the strategic learning and planning processes, focusing on the assessment of outcome- and output-level results and capturing the key lessons learned from project implementation.
The information generated by the evaluation will be used by different stakeholders to contribute to building of the evidence base on effective strategies for women’s empowerment in Georgia and to facilitate UN Women’s strategic reflection and learning for programming in the area.
Main evaluation users include UN Women Country Office in Georgia as well as the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency (project donor). Furthermore, national stakeholders – civil society partners, private companies, grassroots women and targeted state and non-state agencies will be also closely involved in the evaluation process to increase ownership of findings, draw lessons learned, and make greater use of this final evaluation results.
Evaluation Objectives, Criteria, and Questions
The specific evaluation objectives are as follows:
- Analyze the relevance and coherence of the implementation strategy and approaches of the project.
- Assess effectiveness and organizational efficiency in progressing towards the achievement of the project’s results as defined in the interventions.
- Validate the project results in terms of achievements and/or weaknesses toward the outcome and outputs.
- To assess how the project and its results relate and contribute to commitments and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Georgia
- Assess the sustainability of the results achieved by the project.
- Document lessons learned, best practices, success stories, and challenges to inform future work of UN Women and the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency in the areas of women’s leadership and inclusion in decision-making.
- Identify strategies for replication and up-scaling of the project’s best practices.
- Provide actionable recommendations for future programmatic developments and maximize ownership by partners in the country covered by the project.
The evaluation will address the criteria of Project Relevance, Coherence, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Sustainability. Human Rights and Gender Equality will be included as an additional criterion. The evaluation will seek to answer the following key evaluation questions/sub-questions that will be further tailored during the inception phase of the evaluation:
The questions outlined above are preliminary and are expected to be revised and refined by the evaluation team during the inception phase of the evaluation.
Scope of the Evaluation
The final evaluation of the project is to be conducted externally by an international external consultant with support of a national consultant. It is planned to be carried out in Tbilisi, with a possibility of field visits, completed in 40 working days in the period of 28 September 2026 – 7 February 2027.
The final evaluation will include all aspects of the project and will cover almost the full project implementation period, starting from April, 2023 to September, 2026.
Evaluation Design, Process and Methods
The evaluation methodology will be mixed (quantitative and qualitative research methods and analytical approaches) to account for the complexity of gender relations and to ensure participatory and inclusive processes that are culturally appropriate. A theory of change approach will be followed, and the consultants are expected to reconstruct, validate, and identify the gaps in the project’s theories of change (for each of the Outcomes). The reconstructed theories of change should elaborate on how the project has contributed to creating an enabling legislative, policy, institutional, and economically enabling environment in line with internationally binding standards on gender-sensitive governance systems and women, peace, and security in Georgia. Assumptions should be tested and explain both the connections between early, intermediate, and long-term project outcomes and the expectations about how and why the project has brought them about. By reconstructing the Theories of Change evaluators are also expected to identify challenges and gaps in the implementation of the project for future improvement. Hence, an eventual next phase of the project will benefit from a refined and tested the Theories of Change.
Interviews and focus group discussions with all key stakeholders involved in the project implementation, including but not limited to WILD project team, government partners, NGO partners, beneficiaries, etc. shall also take place.
The evaluation team should develop a sampling frame (area and population represented, rationale for selection, mechanism of selection, limitations of the sample) and specify how it will address the diversity of stakeholders in the intervention. The evaluation team should take measures to ensure data quality, reliability and validity of data collection tools and methods and their responsiveness to gender equality and human rights; for example, the limitations of the sample (representativeness) should be stated clearly, and the data should be triangulated (cross-checked against other sources) to help ensure robust results.
Stakeholders Participation and Evaluation Management Structure
The evaluation will be a consultative, inclusive, and participatory process and will ensure the participation of stakeholders engaged in the implementation of the project.
The evaluation will be human rights and gender responsible, and an Evaluation Reference Group (ERG) will be established.
Coordination in the field including logistical support will be the responsibility of UN Women.
This is a consultative/participatory final project evaluation with a strong learning component. The management of the evaluation will ensure that key stakeholders are consulted.
The international consultant will lead the evaluation in close coordination with a national consultant.
Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work
The national consultant will work under the direct supervision of the international evaluator and will benefit from the technical and operational support of UN Women Country Office in Georgia. The national consultant is expected to provide key contextual information and perspective to design and deliver a robust utilisation-focused evaluation will be responsible for the following tasks:
- To provide country contextual advice and support to the international evaluator in designing and delivering contextually relevant and sensitive project evaluation;
- To collect and review all relevant materials, such as reports, assessments, studies, and draft laws, etc.
- Provide outline/translation of all key documents from Georgian into English to the international consultant, as needed.
- To contribute to the development of methodology and evaluation instruments, i.e. focus group and interview guides, and translate the final instruments in Georgian if needed.
- To support arrangement of meetings, focus group discussions, interviews with key beneficiaries and stakeholders of the project together and in consultation with UN Women.
- To support the international consultant to conduct individual interviews and focus groups discussions with the relevant stakeholders online and face-to-face.
- To participate in all the meetings, focus group discussions and interviews, provide interpretation as needed, take notes and prepare summaries in English.
- To conduct focus groups and in-depth interviews with selected respondents independently (including the regions of Georgia), using the agreed guides and provide the international consultant with the summaries of the interviews and focus groups.
- To support international consultant in analyzing the data.
- To be available if further clarification is needed by the international evaluator during the drafting and finalization process of the evaluation, and provide inputs to the evaluation report as needed.
- To support the international consultant in preparing a Power Point Presentation and an outline on preliminary findings and present to ERG and reflect the feedback shared at this presentation in the final report.
- To prepare a brief narrative report on fulfillment of all the tasks assigned by this ToR.
Deliverables
Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel
This is a home-based consultancy.
As part of this assignment, there will be a trip to Tbilisi and a maximum of 2 trips to the regions of Georgia (Shida Kartli, Imereti, Guria, Samegrelo and/or Kakheti) with a total stay of a maximum of 6 days
[1] UNEG Ethical Guidelines: http://uneval.org/papersandpubs/documentdetail.jsp?doc_id=102; The UNEG Code of Conduct for Evaluation: http://uneval.org/papersandpubs/documentdetail.jsp?doc_id=100
Core Values
Integrity;
- Professionalism;
- Respect for Diversity.
Core Competencies
- Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
- Accountability;
- Creative Problem Solving;
- Effective Communication;
- Inclusive Collaboration;
- Stakeholder Engagement;
- Leading by Example.
Functional Competencies
- Ability to think, analyze and articulate strategically on programme development and results-based management
- Ability to facilitate meetings with different levels of stakeholders
- Excellent drafting and writing skills to produce and present concise and analytical discussion papers
- Knowledge in results-based programming in support of gender and human rights
- Technical knowledge in monitoring and evaluation.
Ethical Considerations
UNEG Ethical Guidance should be applied to the selection of methods for the evaluation and throughout the evaluation process. The consultant will sign the “Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form – UNEG Code of Conduct for Evaluation in the UN System” prior to the initiation of the evaluation process.
Education and Certification
- Master’s degree or equivalent in Gender Studies, Social Sciences, Public Policy, Social Policy, or a related field is required
- A first-level university degree in combination with 7 (seven) additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
Experience
- At least 5 (five) years of experience in gender equality, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis and/or women’s empowerment issues, in lieu of advanced degree, or 7 (seven) years of similar experience in case of first level university degree;
- At least 5 (five) years’ experience in conducting/supporting evaluations of strategies, policies, and projects, in lieu of advanced degree, or 7 (seven) years of similar experience in case of first level university degree;
- At least 5 (five) years of experience in conducting qualitative research, including developing qualitative research instruments, conducting interviews and focus groups and analyzing data, in lieu of advanced degree, or 7 (seven) years of similar experience in case of first level university degree;
- Excellent writing and reporting skills with ability to prepare minutes and document key findings of the meetings/consultations/interviews.
- Experience of gender analysis and human-rights based approaches;
- Knowledge of gender equality situation in Georgia is an asset;
Languages
- Proficiency in English and Georgian.
Statements
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.
Diversity and inclusion
At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.
If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.
UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)