Gender Integration Specialist
Chemonics International seeks a part-time Gender Integration Specialist for its USAID Small and Medium Enterprises Activity (SMEA). Pakistan SMEA is a 5-year, $35 million project that is aimed at improvement of financial and operating performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan in seven sectors: Information Communication and Technology (ICT), light engineering, textile (minus spinning), hospitality, minerals (marble, granite, and gems), logistics & packaging, and leather (minus tanning).
Gender integration is a key focus of the project and the project aims to integrate approaches, tools and techniques to enable integrating gender within all the components of the project, and to devise a strategy as well as a time-bound practical implementation plan (identifying the resources required) for achieving the gender related project outcomes. The Gender Integration Expert will report to the Business Enabling Environment and Competitive Enhancement Component Leads.
Responsibilities
• Review and improve SMEA’s gender analysis and integration report by incorporating feedback received from the USAID and other sources that may be contacted during this assignment.
• Conduct activity-level gender analysis – analyze how gender constraints and opportunities will affect project activities and how the project will affect men and women differently and advise on opportunities and potential strategies for inclusion of women.
• Identify the key pillars of the gender integration strategy, especially for the two project components of SMEA: (1) Business Enabling Environment and (2) Competitiveness Enhancement, keeping in view the issues and entry points.
• Develop an informed gender integration implementation strategy, including a communication plan, for each project component which takes into account the key challenges and opportunities for gender integration in SMEA’s target sectors.
• Provide tools and techniques for gender integration within the project life cycle and the key activities including analysis, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Develop a Gender Integration Toolkit for the SMEA team to enable them to:
o Identify gender discrimination within their core scopes of work;
o Propose solutions to address the existing gender inequalities in their scopes of work; and
o Ensure that project activities are designed, implemented and monitored, as well as evaluated in a gender responsive manner.
• Strengthening gender training of SMEA staff, partners and beneficiaries, as required.
• Ensure that conclusions of any gender assessment and/or analysis and USG expectations are integrated in project/activity planning such as annual workplan, activity monitoring and evaluation plan, sector strategies etc.
Qualifications:
• Master’s degree in development studies, social development, gender studies or equivalent; from a reputed international university
• At least 10 years of experience in social development and gender integration/analysis, including developing gender plans in accordance with USAID and international best practices
• Extensive experience of working with public and private sectors for devising the organization’s gender strategies, building capacity of these sector players
• A sound understanding of the gender related issues in Pakistan SME sector including issues pertaining to gender integration
• 3 to 5 years of experience of working with economic growth programming, USAID projects and/or SME development prjects preferred
• Experience designing gender-specific messaging as an element of public outreach campaigns and excellent communication and report writing skills
Assignment and Duty Post:
This is part-time, one-year position with a maximum level of effort (LOE) of 150 days. The position will be based in Islamabad, with travel to other regions of Pakistan, as required.