UN Women: Consultant on Care Economy and Gender-Transformative Care Programming, Home-Based, International Consultant

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. As the lead UN entity on gender equality and secretariat of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, we shift laws, institutions, social behaviors and services to close the gender gap and build an equal world for all women and girls. Our partnerships with governments, women’s movements and the private sector coupled with our coordination of the broader United Nations translate progress into lasting changes. We make strides forward for women and girls in four areas: leadership, economic empowerment, freedom from violence, and women, peace and security as well as humanitarian action. UN Women keeps the rights of women and girls at the centre of global progress – always, everywhere. Because gender equality is not just what we do. It is who we are. UN Women Knowledge and Partnerships Centre in Republic of Korea The UN Women Knowledge and Partnerships Centre in the Republic of Korea (formerly the UN Women Centre of Excellence for Gender Equality, hereinafter "the Centre") was established in 2022 in partnership with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) of the Republic of Korea (ROK). The Centre was founded with a shared mandate to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls across Asia and the Pacific. Located in Seoul, the Centre has, in just over two years, contributed to developing strategic partnerships and strengthening cross-country exchanges and learning among countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including ROK. It has facilitated capacity development, advocacy, and convening of strategic policy dialogues across various thematic areas, including women's economic empowerment, gender-transformative disaster risk reduction, gender-responsive climate actions, Women, Peace and Security, ending gender-based violence, gender statistics, and private sector partnerships. In early 2025, the Centre was rebranded with a new name to emphasize its key functions in facilitating partnership development and knowledge exchange on promising practices and lessons learned for advancing gender equality and women's empowerment. In 2025–2026, the Centre will focus on accelerating investments in two priority areas: 1) transforming care systems, and 2) tackling Technology-Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV). The Centre will embrace innovation, including as it relates to new technologies and partnerships, to increase the breadth and impacts of its work, aligning with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Pact for the Future and the on-going regional and global dialogue on Beijing+30 and its transformative promise to leave no one behind. Prioritisation will be given to supporting at the regional and global level: enhanced knowledge, responses and strategies on transforming care system as a cornerstone of women’s overall empowerment; strengthened knowledge, policies and tools to end technology-facilitated gender-based violence; and increased emphasis on advancing multistakeholder partnerships for gender equality and women’s empowerment. At the global level, under the leadership of the UN Deputy Secretary-General, UN Women coordinated an inter-agency working group, which includes the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), ILO, UNOHCHR, and UNDP. This resulted in a UN System policy paper on "Transforming Care Systems in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals and Our Common Agenda.” This is a practical framework for UN agencies to address care within the context of the SDGs and promotes comprehensive care systems that enable gender equality and social justice. It highlights policy options to support the transformation of care systems and highlights the importance of human rights-based, universal, and transformative approaches to care. This is an important milestone as it will shape and guide UN and system-wide action on Care in the decades to come. Within the focus on Transforming Care Systems, theTransformCare Investment Initiative Asia-Pacific (TCII-AP)is a UN Women-convened initiative to make care systems prosperous for people and the planet. TransformCare is a global large-scale, long-term response aiming to catalyse multi-donor investments and multi-partner collaborations to build resilient care systems, serving as a foundation for caring societies and inclusive and green economies where women can fully realize their economic rights and participation. Advancing women’s economic empowerment by building caring societies and inclusive and green economies aims to contribute by 2035 to: (i) Benefit 100 million women and girls in all their diversities; (ii) Create 125 million new employment opportunities in the care economy in 2035 as well as in future-oriented sectors, including the green and digital economy; (iii) Release 2 billion hours of time spent by women on unpaid care work An important part of TCII is to support policymakers with tools and guidance for designing gender-responsive policies and practices to create an enabling environment to transform care systems. Towards this, UN Women is seeking an international consultant to develop evidence-based guidance and practical tools for gender-transformative care programming. DESCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES/ SCOPE OF WORK The objective of the consultancy is to produce a set of knowledge products and practical tools that support gender-transformative approaches to care by: (i) reviewing standards and operational guidance for care services; (ii) identifying skills and competencies required across paid care occupations; and (iii) developing a gender-transformative checklist for care programming. The specific tasks of the consultant: 1. Conduct an inception meeting with the UN Women team to align expectations, scope, methodology, workplan, timeline and deliverables. 2. Conduct a desk review and synthesis of existing standards, standard operating procedures (SOPs), quality assurance frameworks and operational guidance for childcare, eldercare and disability care services, identifying good practices, gaps and opportunities for strengthening gender-transformative care programming. 3. Review and analyze existing competency frameworks, qualification standards, education and training programmes, certification systems, and professional development opportunities for paid care workers across different care sectors, including childcare, long-term care, disability care and migrant care work, and identify implications for gender-responsive and gender-transformative workforce development. 4. Analyze selected country practices and experiences in the Asia-Pacific region, including the Republic of Korea, to identify lessons learned, promising approaches and innovations relevant to strengthening care systems, care service delivery and workforce development. 5. Drawing on the findings from tasks 2, 3 and 4, develop a gender-transformative care systems assessment framework, assessment checklist and accompanying guidance note aligned with the TransformCare Investment Initiative (TCII) to support policymakers, practitioners and development partners in integrating and assessing gender-transformative principles throughout the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of transforming care systems initiatives. 6. Prepare, present and finalize all deliverables through a review process as such: (i) prepare annotated outlines and draft versions of all three knowledge products for UN Women review and feedback; (ii) present draft findings, assessment framework and checklist to UN Women staff and relevant working groups; (iii) revise all knowledge products and the assessment framework based on feedback re