Background

Background/Context

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.

Women’s Economic Empowerment is one the of the key strategic priorities stated in UN Women’s Global Strategic Plan (2022 -2025) and UN Women’s Strategic Note for Asia and the Pacific (2023 -2025).

This work includes thematic areas, such as Transforming the Care Economy, Advancing Gender-Equality in the World of Work (inclusive of advancing gender-responsive business conduct, Entrepreneurship, Migration) and Climate Change.

About 96 per cent of all jobs in the Asia-Pacific are in the private sector.

This represents a huge potential to implement transformative actions in the world of work and social responsibility in favour of women, benefiting the whole society. There is an increasing consciousness, interest and commitment of private and public sector companies on the value and benefits of gender equality and the economic empowerment of women and its role to achieve it.

In an effort to drive transformative change in the private sector, UN Women in partnership with the Government of Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is launching the new initiative “UN Women Gender Action Lab (GAL): Innovation and Impact for Gender Equality in Asia-Pacific, powered by the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs).”

With an initial four-year commitment, both partners are laying the foundation to build a unique Gender Action Lab (GAL) for Asia and the Pacific aiming to foster private sector innovations and concrete actions that advance gender equality and women’s empowerment and build more inclusive economies across the region.

In collaboration with the private sector, the GAL will identify, pilot and scale up innovative multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives aligned with the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), such as thematic innovation labs, hackathons, incubators and accelerators, policy labs, applied research initiatives and other partnership support programs.

Finally, the GAL will generate new data and evidence and provide technical assistance to advance policy, investment and ecosystem development for gender-transformative innovations.

Established as a dynamic platform, the GAL is envisioned to be a long-term, multi-stakeholder and multi-donor platform across the whole region, seeking to galvanize efforts for gender-transformative action and impact within and with the private sector towards 2030 and beyond.

Through GAL, a range of stakeholders across the Asia-Pacific region will have a unique opportunity to forge new partnerships, explore new and innovative modalities of working, and collectively build a powerful movement for impact that creates transformations in the world of work for women[1] and ultimately innovations that reshape economies and societies so that they are equitable for everyone, including people with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) communities, youth, older people and ethnic minorities, among others.

The Gender Action Lab will build on UN Women’s success in promoting commitment to and implementation of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a set of 7 principles that provide companies a roadmap to become more gender-responsive throughout their value chain.

The WEPs were launched in 2010 by UN Women and the UN Global Compact and is the only framework that encompasses gender equality at all organizational levels, beginning with leadership and providing guidance for the workplace, marketplace and community, underpinned by a strong emphasis on accountability and transparent reporting of progress.

To date, more than 9,700 companies have signed the WEPs globally, and in the Asia-Pacific more than 2,600 have committed.

Momentum has been growing at a rapid pace in the Asia-Pacific, as in 2019 less than 600 companies had committed to the WEPs.

This success has been driven by a multi-stakeholder, -country and – year program WeEmpowerAsia, which included strong programmatic elements such as the Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards, an initiative also supported by the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with the aim to showcase best practices for gender-responsive business conduct and mobilize further action.

Strong momentum and commitment for accelerated business action for gender equality has been clearly established across the region, networks of stakeholders are in place, and a suite of evidence, data, tools and assets have been created, including a series of government endorsed policy advocacy briefs which provide a strategic entry-point for deeper action at both levels — with business and with governments and business regulators.

Despite this momentum, there is considerable evidence that while commitments towards gender equality in the private sector are increasing, implementation is lagging behind.

The gaps in action by government and private sector remain persistent and call for a new approach to bridge this gap.

This program proposes a more systemic and sustainable capacity building approach paired with practical approaches to enable accelerated implementation and a mechanism for policy makers to learn from these solutions and enable them to design practice-informed and feasible policies to accelerate gender-responsive business conduct.

With an approach to leverage the innovation capability of the private sector to create innovation and change within the private sector, GAL aims to incorporate an inclusive and creative problem-solving methodology to enable multi-stakeholder and innovative thinking around specific thematic areas to ideate and prototype new multi-stakeholder solutions.

The key outcome is: More private sector companies in Asia – Pacific are implementing gender-responsive business practices and policies to enable more women to equitably lead and participate in the world of work.

The program will achieve this through 3 interrelated pillars:

1. Awareness, Commitments, and Capacity built on the WEPs and engagement of key stakeholders for the thematic lab
2. Multistakeholder thematic Gender Innovation labs: piloting concrete solutions with innovators and policymakers (thematic areas may include employer-supported care, disability inclusion, transparency & reporting)
3. Document Best Practices, generating and disseminating recommendations for action, and recognizing businesses through the Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards and WEPs Forum

Based on the very strong foundation built through previous programs, the UN Women’s Asia-Pacific Gender Action Lab (GAL) aims to further advance private sector and government action to accelerate gender-responsive business policies and practices in Asia-Pacific by strengthening, in particular, implementation efforts to contribute to closing the Private Sector and Government ‘Action Gap’ across the Asia and the Pacific, with a specific regional focus on ASEAN and especially in four priority countries, namely Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia and Cambodia.

It will also have a regional component under the responsibility of UN Women Region Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP).

For more details about GAL, see the Introductory Brief.

In identifying a key thematic area aligned to the WEPs that shows a promising foundation and enabling environment, strong partners, policy incentives and/or demand to initiative an Innovation Lab in the Malaysia, UN Women is seeking a National consultant to draft a 5-10 page thematic ‘Challenge Brief’ that sets the background and a specific challenge statement for a thematic Innovation Lab to be launched.

The specific structure of the brief will be provided by UN Women upon onboarding, but it will include the following sections: Background to the Issue & Problem Statement (with key data points from existing research and stakeholder consultations), Previous and Current Action (what is being done, the key stakeholders, relevant policy or legislation), Challenges and barriers to action (assessing why more action has not been taken or what the specific barriers are to accelerated or deepened action in the specific area), Opportunities & Entry points (including assessment and identification of key stakeholders taking action or relevant policies and identification of potential partners for the Lab), and a final ‘How To’ statement setting the specific thematic challenge to be addressed.

For example, the challenge statements could be ‘How might the private sector in Cambodia work with innovators and social enterprises to include more women with disabilities in their workforce and supply chains?’ or ‘How can social innovation support Cambodian companies to develop policies and implement practices for gender-responsive procurement and supplier diversity?’

The National Consultant will work under the supervision of the Regional Lead, WEE & Migration, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and in close collaboration with the UN Women ROAP program team.

The consultant might also engage with UN Women’s guidance with government officials, multi and bi-lateral donors, civil society and the private sector and programmatic partners.

[1] UN Women (2024), Women’s Economic Empowerment Strategy defining the Gender Accelerator ‘Women in the World of Work’ , p.25

Duties and Responsibilities

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision and guidance of the Regional Lead, WEE & Migration, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, the consultant will undertake the following tasks to develop a 5-10 page Challenge Brief as well as a one-page summary document to be used to present the Challenge to private sector partners: