UN Women: National Consultant-Gender Responsive Macroeconomics Expert

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

UN Women in Bangladesh supports the government to implement commitments to international normative standards on gender equality and women’s human rights. The UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2022-2026, launched in 2021, and the corresponding UN Women Bangladesh Strategic Note (2022-2026) define UN Women’s strategic engagement in Bangladesh. The country strategy focuses on strengthening the national structures and mechanisms for gender mainstreaming in policies, plans, and budgets; supporting efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women; promoting women’s access to decent and safe work; promoting policies and government investment in women’s empowerment and resilience building in the context of climate change, humanitarian crisis as well as other threats to peace and security. UN Women works with a range of stakeholders in Bangladesh, including the government, civil society, women’s organisations, youth, UN agencies, and donors, to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. 

Macroeconomic policies are key enablers of gender equality, given their influence on the broader economic environment. These policies shape women's economic empowerment through various channels, including employment generation, the extent of unpaid care work predominantly undertaken by women, and the size of fiscal space, which determines the public resources available to advance gender equality objectives. While often perceived as ‘gender neutral’, macroeconomic policies have clear distributive effects that impact women and men differently and influence broader gender dynamics.

Traditionally, macroeconomic management has prioritized a narrow set of objectives—most notably, accelerating GDP growth and maintaining low inflation—while paying insufficient attention to issues of inequality and distribution. There remains a widespread belief that economic growth alone will resolve structural challenges such as gender inequality; however, empirical evidence suggests that growth, in and of itself, does not guarantee progress toward gender equality. 

In this context, the robust application of Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB) underscores its vital role as a public policy instrument in achieving broader macroeconomic objectives. The Government of Bangladesh has, for over a decade, expressed its commitment to gender mainstreaming and GRB. The inclusion of gender issues in the Medium-Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF) in 2005-06, Recurrent, Capital, Gender, and Poverty (RCGP), as well as the preparation of a Gender Budget Report (GBR) as a regular feature, including the recently implemented Gender Finance Tracking (GFT) Model within the framework of the Integrated Budget and Accounting System (iBAS++), reflects the political acceptability of GRB as a tool for women’s advancement in the country. This commitment is further anchored in the National Women Development Policy 2011, the 8th Five-Year Plan, the White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh Economy 2024 and the impending graduation from a Least Developed Country (LDC) status in 2026.

Thus, to respond to the differential needs of women and excluded groups in light of Bangladesh’s graduation from a LDC status in 2026 and the evolving country context, the UN Women Bangladesh Country Office (BCO) seeks to strengthen programmatic interventions by streamlining and leveraging gender-responsive macroeconomic instruments, deepening advocacy engagement with key national stakeholders and advancing the financing for gender equality agenda. 

This is aligned with SN Outcome 1.1 (By 2026, more people in Bangladesh, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalized from all gender and social groups and those from lagging districts benefit from sustainable livelihood and decent work opportunities resulting from responsible, inclusive, sustainable, green, and equitable economic development) and Outcome 1.4 (By 2026, women, girls and gender diverse people benefit from an environment in which they are empowered to exercise their rights, agency and decision-making power over all aspects of their lives and are free from all forms of discrimination, violence and harmful norms and practices), contributing to the following outputs:

Output 1.1.1: The government, at both the national and sub-national levels, has enhanced capacities to draft laws, policies and practices promoting inclusive and resilient women’s economic empowerment, gender-responsive green growth and decent work (including addressing unpaid care and domestic work and supporting informal sector workers), with support from UN Women.

Output 1.4.1: Government institutions have strengthened capacities to mainstream GEWE into public policies, laws, plans, financing strategies, institutional frameworks and data collection processes, in line with global GE standards, including for VAW prevention and reduction.

To enhance its efforts in engendering macroeconomics to advance gender equality, UN Women Bangladesh is seeking the services of a highly qualified National Consultant to support BCO’s programming on economic governance, building on the resources from regional and global best practices, including the Financing for Women’s Empowerment in the Context of Post-COVID Recovery and LDC Graduation of Bangladesh | CPD study and the forthcoming UN Women commissioned GRB Forward-Looking Assessment. 

Objective: 

The overall objective of the consultancy is to support BCO’s work on gender responsive macroeconomics. 

Scope of Work/Duties and Responsibilities: 

Under the overall guidance of UN Women’s Deputy Representative and the direct supervision of the Programme Analyst, Gender-Responsive Governance (GRG), the consultant will be responsible for the following tasks: 

Duration of the assignment: 

The assignment will commence in July 2025 and be completed by February 2026. The total duration of the work would be 8 months/65 days. 

Deliverables: Sl Deliverable(s) Deadline(s) Required Number of Days Instalments 1.  A detailed methodological note developed in consultation with UN Women July 2025 05 days

15% payment the total contract value shall be paid upon submission of deliverables of 1,2&3 upon acceptance and certification by UN Women Bangladesh Contract Administrator  2. Draft State of the Art assessment for feedback and validation 05 days

3. Final submission of the State-of-the-Art report 05 days 4. Draft macroeconomic assessment of the LDC Smooth Transition Strategy for feedback and validation August 2025 05 days

20% payment the total contract value shall be paid upon submission of deliverables of 4&5 upon acceptance and certification by UN Women Bangladesh Contract Administrator  5.  Final submission of macroeconomic assessment of the LDC Smooth Transition Strategy 05 days 6.  Draft empirical and non-empirical simulation analysis on the impact of LDC graduation for feedback and validation September – October 2025 10 days

35% payment the total contract value shall be paid upon submission of deliverables of 6&7 upon acceptance and certification by UN Women Bangladesh Contract Administrator  7.  Final submission of empirical and qualitative simulation analysis on the impact of LDC graduation 10 days 8. Draft two deep dives (based on secondary data) on monetary and trade policies in Bangladesh from a gender lens, for feedback and validation November – December 2025 7.5 days

30% payment the total contract value shall be paid upon submission of deliverables of 8,9&10 upon acceptance and certification by UN Women Bangladesh Contract Administrator  9. Final submission of two deep dives (based on secondary data) on monetary and trade policies in Bangladesh from a gender lens 7.5 days 10.  Facilitate thematic dialogues, policy simulation exercises, multi-stakeholder consultations, and expert group meetings  August 2025- February 2026 05 days Total number of days  65 days 100%

Supervision & Performance evaluation:

The consultant’s performance will be evaluated based on timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, accuracy, and quality of the services delivered. The contract performance shall be evaluated and monitored by the Programme Analyst, GRG. 

Duty Station(s): Dhaka 

Travel and DSA: No DSA will be paid at the duty station(s). For this consultancy, the duty station is considered Dhaka. If unforeseen travel outside the duty station not required by the Terms of Reference is requested by UN Women, and upon prior agreement/approval, such travel shall be UN Women’s expenses, and the individual contractor shall receive a per-diem not to exceed United Nations daily subsistence allowance rate in such other location(s). 

Core Values

Core Competencies:

Functional Competencies: