National Consultant for National Care Economy Landscape Analysis, Yerevan, Armenia

## National Consultant for National Care Economy Landscape Analysis, Yerevan, Armenia - Organization:UN Women - United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women - Office:UN Women in Yerevan As the lead UN entity on gender equality and secretariat of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, we shift laws, institutions, social behaviours 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. Care is a fundamental component of economic and social systems and is essential to the well-being of individuals, societies, economies, and ecosystems. It encompasses both paid and unpaid activities that sustain people and the planet across the life course, ranging from caring for oneself and others to protecting the environment. Everyone requires care at different stages of life, making strong, inclusive, and accessible care systems critical for equal participation in society and the realization of dignity and well-being. Care involves “caring about, taking care of, caregiving, and care receiving,” and includes the support necessary for individuals to live autonomously and fully in society. Yet social norms and gender stereotypes continue to place responsibility for care disproportionately on women, reinforcing a gendered division of labour and contributing to the persistent undervaluation of this essential work in economic planning and public policy. Care is a public good and a core element of social and economic infrastructure, as essential to economic functioning as transport, energy, and digital systems. Responsibility for care must be shared across the care diamond, the State, the private sector, communities and households, rather than falling predominantly on households, particularly women and girls. When care systems are weak, underfunded, or inaccessible, the costs are disproportionately borne by women and girls in the form of time poverty, reduced employment opportunities, and heightened vulnerability. By contrast, strong care infrastructure, comprising care services (such as healthcare, early childhood development centres, services for older persons, and support for persons with disabilities) and basic physical infrastructure (including piped water, electricity, sanitation, and public transport), creates and maintains environments that support both care recipients and caregivers. Investing in this infrastructure is critical to delivering quality care, redistributing unpaid direct care work more equitably between households, the State and the market, and between women and men, girls and boys, and reducing labour-intensive indirect care (such as collecting water, cooking, washing, and cleaning). Reframing care as infrastructure moves it from being viewed as social expenditure to a strategic investment with measurable economic and social returns. Global evidence [1] shows that investments in care infrastructure generate significant economic and social returns. According to the International Labour Organization, investment in gender-equal leave policies and universal childcare and long-term care services could create up to 299 million jobs worldwide by 2035, reflecting the large employment potential of strengthened care systems. Moreover, estimates suggest that every dollar invested in closing the childcare policy gap could yield an average of USD 3.76 in global GDP returns by 2035, highlighting the strong macroeconomic benefits of care investment [2] . In Armenia, women spend nearly five times more hours than men on unpaid care and domestic work, a disparity that significantly constrains women's participation in the labour market, limits their income and pension prospects, and reduces their opportunities for leadership and decision-making. Unequal care responsibilities thus represent a major structural barrier to gender equality, women's economic empowerment, and inclusive growth. UN Women promotes a gender-transformative approach to care grounded in the “5R” framework: Recognize, Reduce, Redistribute, Reward, and Represent. This approach calls for recognizing care as work and integrating it into data collection and policy frameworks; reducing the intensity and time burden of unpaid care through improved infrastructure and services; redistributing care responsibilities more equitably between the State, private sector, community and households, as well as within households between women and men; rewarding paid care work through decent wages, skills development, and social protection; and ensuring that care workers and care recipients are meaningfully represented in decision-making processes. Together, these principles provide a comprehensive foundation for building inclusive, sustainable, and rights-based care systems. Climate change further amplifies the urgency of addressing care inequalities. Environmental degradation, water scarcity, and climate-related shocks disproportionately increase unpaid care and domestic work, particularly for women in rural and vulnerable communities. Without resilient and accessible care services, climate adaptation efforts risk exacerbating existing gender inequalities. Integrating care considerations into climate policies and investments—by ensuring continuity of care services during crises, reducing domestic burdens through climate-resilient infrastructure, and supporting women as agents of adaptation—strengthens both social and environmental resilience. In this context, UN Women seeks to engage a consultant to review, validate and further develop a national situation (landscape) analysis of the care economy in Armenia. UN Women will provide the consultant with completed analytical products, including the inception report, desk review summary, annotated bibliography, stakeholder mapping and matrix, policy, legal and institutional mapping and gap analysis, and draft analysis, together with interview transcripts and other available raw material. As the first stage of the assignment, the consultant will assess these materials for accuracy, completeness and internal consistency, verify that findings are supported by the underlying evidence, and identify issues requiring clarification or further analysis. Building on the validated materials, the analysis will provide a comprehensive overview of key data and statistics on the care landscape in the country at both rural and urban levels, existing care policies, services, infrastructure and institutional arrangements, and the distribution of care responsibilities across the care diamond. It will consolidate and strengthen the available evidence, address gaps or inconsistencies identified through the initial review, and identify needs and opportunities for strengthening Armenia's care system and informing targeted, gender-responsive policy and programmatic interventions. This work is part of “Women's Economic Empowerment in the South Caucasus” WEESC project which is implemented with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). The overarching goal of the project is to ensure that women, particularly the poor and socially excluded, in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are economically empowered and participate in relevant decision-making. To reach this goal, WEESC applies a holistic approach, enabling linked interventions at three levels: grassroots, policies and legislation, and institutions. The consultant will be reporting to the WEESC Project