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Gender inequality is one of the obstacles to reducing loss of lives and livelihoods in disaster settings since it shapes the extent to which men, women, boys and girls are vulnerable to, experience and affected by disasters. Often, women and girls are disproportionately exposed to risk including sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), increased loss of livelihoods, security, and even loss of lives, during and in the aftermath of disasters. This is mainly due to deeply entrenched gender based social norms, economic, religious and cultural constructs that often marginalize and exclude them. In most community structures, women occupy subordinate roles that compound their vulnerability and hinders their effective participation in socio-economic development. Such gender-based inequalities place women and girls at a greater risk to disasters and humanitarian crisis including limited access to early warning information, knowledge and information on humanitarian response, limited participation in preparedness planning, policy and decision-making processes.
Furthermore, crises radically affect social and cultural structures including a shift of the roles of women and men. Women may assume new and additional responsibilities as heads of households, while men may be required to do some domestic work due to separation from their families. Therefore, if humanitarian interventions are not planned with a gender lens, not only do the chances of doing greater harm and the risk of not addressing the real needs of specific populations increase, but the opportunity to support and promote gender equality during response and recovery stages can also be lost.
As an entity dedicated to gender equality, UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) works with key partners ranging from government, UN organisations, international and national NGOs, and civil society in development and humanitarian settings to enhance gender equality and empowerment of women in Ethiopia. In crisis settings, UN Women supports in the coordination of gender mainstreaming, evidence-based response, targeted programming and in building capacities of humanitarian stakeholders including governments and local actors to achieve their gender commitments.
To this end, UN Women ECO is recruiting an international consultant to strengthen in-country capacity on gender equality programming through gender mainstreaming in humanitarian action in Ethiopia. The consultant will develop a contextualised gender mainstreaming pocket guide for humanitarian responders in Ethiopia, develop and deliver a training curriculum on this contextualised pocket guide, and create information, education, and communication (IEC) materials with key messages on gender equality for humanitarian stakeholders and affected communities. UN Women will translate the training package and IEC materials into local languages.
The objective of this consultancy is to equip humanitarian responders with practical guidance on how and why to enhance gender mainstreaming in their programming, build capacity in this regard, and raise awareness on the importance of gender equality programming in humanitarian settings.
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