RFP - Hiring of resource agency for WE India Project

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About the Organization

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. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

A key area of concern for UN Women is women’s economic empowerment as expressed in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 as well as in the targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 for gender equality and women’s empowerment and of several other SDGs relating to inclusive growth, decent work, ending poverty, reducing inequality, and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.

About the Proposal  

WE India is a collaborative effort between UN Women India and the European Union (EU) to advance women’s economic empowerment in India (2024-2027). By promoting decent and safe economic opportunities, data driven policy advocacy, collaborative efforts with a range of stakeholders around addressing discriminatory social norms and engagement in EU- India policy dialogues within the Team Europe framework, the project aims to enhance the enabling environment for economic and social rights for women and girls in all their diversity in India.

The project envisions following result areas:

• Increased access to safe and decent economic opportunities for women and girls in all their diversity.
• Enhanced gender transformative policies and decision- making processes to improve women’s access to safe and decent employment and entrepreneurship.
• Positive gender norms that enable and increase women’s participation in economic and social life are promoted.

Ultimately, the programme will contribute to the achievement of gender equality through enabling women’s increased participation in the labour force, improved opportunities for women’ employment in high growth potential sectors such as digital and clean energy with a focus on Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM), entrepreneurship, and through strengthening of corporate sector’s commitment and action to ensure gender equality in business culture and practices.

Key components of the project include:

• Corporate action for women’s economic empowerment through Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs)

WEPs is a set of seven principles for businesses offering guidance on how to strengthen gender equality in the workplace, in the marketplace and in the community. The WEPs are jointly developed by UN Women and UN Global Compact and seeking the commitments and concrete implementation by private corporations around the globe [https:\weps.org]. The following are the 7 WEPs:

• Principle 1: Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality
• Principle 2: Treat all women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights and non-discrimination
• Principle 3: Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers
• Principle 4: Promote education, training, and professional development for women
• Principle 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women
• Principle 6: Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy
• Principle 7: Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality

All businesses stand to benefit from greater equality for women and more than 10500 businesses leaders around the world and 423 in India endorsed WEPs [https://www.weps.org/companies].

• Women’s access to decent and safe employment

This entails strengthening employability and digital skills of women from diverse socio-economic backgrounds enrolled in select government Industrial Training Institutes ( ITIs) in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra with a focus on STEM, digital and clean energy sectors and linking them with jobs.

• Women’s entrepreneurship focussed on access to finance, markets and business development

This will entail creating avenues for women’s increased access to finance, markets (including through corporate and public procurement) as well as providing networking, capacity building trainings and enterprise/business development advisory services to micro, small and medium high growth potential women entrepreneurs including in the energy/digital sectors.

• Gender data and statistics

This entails strengthening the availability of gender data and statistics including providing technical assistance to relevant government data producing and using agencies as well as corporates to inform their policies and programme’s for women’s economic empowerment.

• Positive social norms

This entails promoting knowledge exchange, dialogues, information sharing among relevant national and international civil society, corporates, government institutions for addressing negative and harmful gender norms and challenging stereotypes including in areas of relevance to the EU strategic partnerships (e.g. climate and energy, digital, circular economy, sustainable urbanisation, trade and investment).

Objective of the Assignment:

The objectives of the assignment are:

• to expand Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) adoption and implementation by existing and new signatories at scale in India and create an enabling ecosystem for women’s participation and leadership in corporate sector
• to leverage the potential of corporate sector in strengthening the ecosystem for women’s decent and safe employment opportunities
• to strengthen women’s entrepreneurship specifically women’s access to finance, markets and business development support including leveraging the potential of corporates in creating an enabling environment for women entrepreneurs

UN Women seeks to hire services of an organization/consulting firm/resource agency to support the implementation of WE India Programme to meet the objectives as stated above. The agency is expected to deploy its proven expertise, established resource base as well as experience on empowering women and promoting diversity and inclusion within corporate environment.

The selected supplier is expected to have a full-time team of professionals comprising of expertise and experience on promoting women’s employment and entrepreneurship; women’s economic empowerment policies & programmes; corporate policies on HR and procurement, supply chains, diversity and inclusion; trainers and operational staff fully dedicated to WE India assignment.

Target Group:

• Corporate Sector – private and public companies
• Women entrepreneurs leading registered micro small and medium enterprises
• Women and girls in ITIs and polytechnics
• Industry bodies, incubators, accelerators, investors, financial institutions, service providers
• Relevant National and State Government Ministries and Departments

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Expand Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) awareness, adoption and implementation by existing and new signatories at scale in India.
• Leverage the potential of corporate sector in strengthening the ecosystem for women’s decent and safe employment opportunities.
• Strengthen women entrepreneurs’ access to finance, markets and business development support including leveraging the potential of corporates in creating an enabling environment for women entrepreneurs with a focus on registered women’s micro small and medium enterprises as well as startups.
• Quarterly detailed progress report as well as final project completion report

Time Frame and Location:

• Time frame: The contract will cover the period from June 2025 to October 2027

Location:

• Pan India for WEPs adoption and implementation by private and public companies
• Pan India for women registered micro, small and medium enterprises
• Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra for STEM Connect Initiative

How to Apply

Deadline on: 14-May-2025 08:00 (GMT -4.00)

For more information please check the Link

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Tags Entrepreneurship Skill Development Women Empowerment Advocacy Others