National Consultant to Develop the Concept and Methodology of Collection and Analysis of Women's Entrepreneurship Data in Support of the National Bureau of Statistic (NBS)

Background:

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.

The work of UN Women in Moldova is guided by its new Country Strategic Note 2023-2027, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for Moldova (2023-2027), UN Women Global Strategic Plan, National Programs and Strategies and aims to contribute to the gender-responsive implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Strategic Note focuses on four main areas: 1) Ending Violence against Women; 2) Women’s Leadership and Governance; 3) Women’s Economic Empowerment; and 4) Humanitarian and Peace development nexus and UN Coordination on gender equality and women empowerment.

To ensure that women and girls, including those at greatest risk of being left behind, have improved access to resources, equal opportunities, and rights to enjoy a life without discrimination and violence, UN Women is implementing the project “Ending Violence, Expanding Livelihood Opportunities for Women and Accelerating Gender Governance in Moldova (EVOLVE4GE)” with financial support of European Union. The project addresses the key challenges women and girls face in the country, such as a) gender-blind policies and budgets that enable the persistence and perpetuation of gender inequalities; b) uneven participation, contribution, and benefit of women and men from the national economy; c) high prevalence of gender-based violence and limited access to specialist services and capacities for integrated service provision. 

One of the key priorities is to support national authorities in advancing women's economic empowerment through data generation and analysis of women's entrepreneurship in the Republic of Moldova. Building upon existing national analyses/studies on women's entrepreneurship, UN Women will further support the data collection and analysis of women's and men's entrepreneurship activity and identify entry points for enhancing entrepreneurial opportunities.  By releasing a new study in this field, UN Women will bolster its support to the NBS and public authorities (as data producers and data users) to enhance the availability of data for developing a business environment that embraces sex disaggregation of data across the existing database.

In this regard, UN Women aims to engage a consultant who will be responsible for developing the concept and methodology for collecting and analyzing data on women's entrepreneurship, including tailored support to NBS from the design stage to the data analysis and interpretation. 

The study will provide comprehensive data and evidence of women's overall participation and representation in entrepreneurship, including the number of women-owned businesses, their share in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the sectors they operate in, access to finance and property, economic performance and export activities, use of innovation and information technologies within enterprises, etc.

The study aims to inform actions to remove barriers for women in business and recommendations for improving national policies and legal frameworks on women's economic empowerment. 

The consultant will report to the Pillar lead on economic empowerment and will be supported by the Project Officer on women’s economic empowerment, who will be the point of contact on contract and payment issues.

Deliverables

Working under the overall supervision of the UN Women Project officer on economic empowerment, the consultant will be responsible for the following:

As per Responsibilities outlined above, the incumbent will be responsible for delivering the following outputs: 

• Assessment of the current data on women entrepreneurship collected by NBS
• Concept and methodology for the study on women's entrepreneurship, including data collection instruments
• Survey for collection of data on women's entrepreneurship
• Statistic report on women's entrepreneurship

Language of deliverables  

• The reports and timesheets delivered to UN Women shall be prepared in English. 
• The technical deliverables shall be provided in Romanian, upon need, in English. 
• The technical deliverables shall be developed in consultation with NBS and UN Women.  

The assignment should be carried out within a period of 12 months, not exceeding 75 working days (with the possibility of extension following satisfactory performance and needs for support expressed by national counterparts). 

The assignment's start date is envisaged for November 202​4​ and will be completed by November​ 2025 unless UN Women extends it based on amended ToRs.