Consultancy Gender, Enterprise & Market(GEM) Assessment

GENDER, ENTERPRISE, AND MARKET(GEM) ASSESSMENT IN KIRKUK AND DIYALA

Subject of the assignment

GEM Assessment Kirkuk and Diyala

Starting date

22.09.2022

Duration

Requirements

1. Technical Proposal (including methodology, work plan, output).
2. Financial Proposal
3. Sample report/ previous work

Deadline for application

02.10.2022

Application to be sent to

[email protected]

1. Context and Project Background

Oxfam is a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice. Oxfam offers lifesaving support in times of crisis and advocates for economy justice, gender equality, and climate action. Oxfam demands equal rights and equal treatment so that everyone can thrive, not just survive. Recognizing the importance of sustainable development towards achieving inclusive justice, Oxfam applies a triple nexus approach that connects its humanitarian work with longer-term development initiatives alongside advocacy work to ensure more sustainable change. Oxfam’s humanitarian and development priorities in-country are emergency food security, vulnerable livelihoods, water and sanitation, gender justice, and protection. Oxfam has been working in Iraq since the 1990s with an expanding and contracting presence has embarked on research and operational projects related to sustainable production and private sector development, with a view of gradually shifting from humanitarian and early-recovery actions to longer-term solutions to the prevailing drivers of vulnerability.

According to the 2021 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) the country is facing severe water stress, direct result of climate change. This is exemplified by a 50% decrease in the water supply of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, accounting for 98% of Iraq’s water supply for drinking, sanitation, and irrigation in 20213. In the Zab River in Kirkuk region, water content has decreased by 70%.4 Diyala’ s main water storage, Lake Hamrin, has been almost completely depleted. May 2021, Diyala Governate warned of an unprecedented drought hitting five administrative units that could provoke migration and the collapse of the agriculture sector. By mid-summer, line ministries prohibited the planting of summer crops in Diyala to preserve water resources, immediately impacting 70% of the population dependent on agriculture. By October 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that its winter crop area would be halved because of the water crisis. This means significantly fewer farmers will receive government-provided agricultural inputs across Iraq – no farmers in Diyala whatsoever – and the government will not buy their harvest. A 2022 report from FAO’s Data in Emergencies Monitoring concluded that the combined impact of water scarcity and reduced access to inputs contributed to decrease in the annual harvest greater than 80% in Diyala governorate. Oxfam’s community consultations in Diyala and Kirkuk revealed increased rates of waterborne disease attributable to limited and poor-quality drinking water. While water supplies are gradually replenishing, many systems have already experienced significant damage and are not fit to withstand future shocks.

The growing water pressure, if it continues to go unchecked, has the potential to deepen divisions between ethno-sectarian groups, and generate instability and new protection risks. While IoM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) indicates levels of social cohesion appear to be stable across areas of displacement and return, Muqdadiya was a notable outlier due to high levels of violent incidents, threats, and reported mistrust between IDPs, returnees, and host community members. Low levels of social cohesion, coupled with severe environmental degradation, risk contributing to renewed tensions and/or displacement in Diyala. While social cohesion is relatively better in Hawija and Daqauq, Kirkuk, access to services remain highly unequal among IDPs and recent returnees. In both Diyala and Kirkuk, the drought and climate-change induced events forecasted for 2022 can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities among IDPs and returnees, while serving as a major obstacle to durable solutions.

Considering the patriarchal nature of the communities, women and girls are disproportionately affected across all the intrinsically vulnerable segments of the communities, particularly IDPs, returnees, and poor host-community households. Nevertheless, women are a significant economic entrepreneurial force whose contributions to local, national, and global economies are far reaching. Women produce and consume, manage businesses and households, earn income, hire labour, borrow, and save, and provide a range of services for businesses and workers. Understanding how women access markets as producers and wage laborers is likely to prove critical for fostering pro-poor and inclusive economic growth. Analysing where women are, in the local supply chain and documenting the resources they use, and transform will provide information about how to strengthen local economies and maximize forward and backward linkages. Finally, reducing barriers to market access and enhancing women’s productivity will necessarily benefit both the local economies and households. It is against this backdrop that Oxfam is planning to undertake a Gender, Enterprise, and Markets (GEM) study, whose recommendations will inform the design of actions supported by the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC) project to be implemented in Diyala and Kirkuk. This term of reference (TOR) therefore spells out the guidelines to enable effective delivery expected outcomes of this component of the SDC project, which have been broadly identified as;

• Increase women’s leadership (including power, decision making at HH level) and participation, as well as through collective empowerment.
• Increase women’s access to economic empowerment and opportunities.
• Reduce/Prevent risks of GBV including in relation to women’s economic empowerment and expand access to information, goods, and services.
• Increase (the recognition of) women’s leadership in promoting social cohesion amongst targeted communities.
• Identify and promote the local value chains that has the potential for inclusive and sustainable growth of livelihoods, particularly for women and adolescent girls.

Oxfam therefore plans to recruit a consultant to conduct a Gender, Enterprise, and Markets (GEM) Assessment to identify potential and recommended job/economic empowerment areas for women and adolescent girls, considering the contextual challenges identified herein.

Location: Kirkuk: Daquq and Hawija districts including (Zab and Abbasy sub districts)

Diyala: Khanaqin district (Khanaqin center, Jalawla) and Muqdadiya district (Harouniya and Sinsil areas)

1. Scope of Work

The overall aim of this assessment is to determine which issues in the household require interventions to enable sustainable women’s economic leadership and resilience in agricultural, commodity/services and labour markets, and what socio-economic factors affect women’s, men’s, and community’s capacity to adapt to risks and shocks. The principal objective is to determine which market options are favourable for ‘most women’, and to identify interventions needed to ensure/enhance households’ ‘capacity to adapt’ and women’s agency.

The expected outputs are as summarised below.

• Establish and confirm the asymmetrical rights and responsibilities- the gender division of labour (unpaid care work) and decision-making (including e.g. access to information, mobility) within the household that underpins fundamental differences in the rights and responsibilities of men and women. This is with a view to identifying matters that affects women’s ability to participate in paid employment, to access education and training, and influences their choice of productive activities. This may include to understand in general the potential levels of risks of abuse, exploitation and violence, in a sensitive manner (see as well ethical requirements).
• Establish and confirm the social norms across different genders; identify common representations of leadership and technical competences (that are/if gendered, possibly with other intersectional factors), which tasks and jobs are considered more appropriate for men or women, and overt or covert screening that filters out applicants who defy these norms. Describe/provide examples of how these norms and expectations influence women’s access to productive assets and activities, and their ownership of wealth.
• Establish and confirm the women consumption patterns; as primary caregivers who are responsible for household provisioning, women may be more affected than men by changes in the price of food, education expenses, or health care provisions. When prices rise or service provision declines, women may be required to compensate directly by reducing their consumption or indirectly by expanding their role as caregivers. The import of this is to identify specific goods and services that are consumed by more women, with a view to focused investments by the project.
• Identify sectors and value chains that are not overly saturated and present potential for sustainable growth, profitability, and employment. Focus must be on sectors and businesses (including home-grown) that allow for women’s effective and fair participation (and on which terms/for which benefits), including IDPs, Returnees and women with disabilities.
• Identify and study successful home-based businesses, income generating activities and employment integration of vulnerable women and adolescent girls – however considering the potential risks to women’s empowerment (i.e., potentially affecting decent work conditions, opportunities for solidarity and collective power, or simply opportunities for emancipation outside the home). Considering the socio-cultural and security factors that inhibit movement of women and adolescent girls outside the home, these will inform the design of actions that are likely to meet least resistance amongst targeted communities.
• Establish and confirm the existing financial services markets; The financial markets that need to be assessed comprise a broad range of products and services offered by financial intermediaries: banking, credit, savings, insurance, pensions, mortgages, and other financial instruments that are relied upon to spread risk or insure against loss. It would be useful to briefly outline the terms and conditions needed to access each (including in their possible, informal gendered biases) and whether these policies enable or hinder equal access by men and women (potentially including informal financial practices and debt management, financial literacy of women…).

The underlying/core aim of this GEM assessment is to provide practical recommendations and inputs to inform Oxfam’s livelihoods programming, which aims to enable and prepare Women and girls in Kirkuk and Diyala to proactively position themselves for employment and to participate in income-generating activities. The recommendations shall consider the key priorities as stipulated in the SDC project.

1. Methodology

The potential candidate will have to develop and submit a proposal with a clear approach, methodology, implementation plan, budget, and other relevant strategies to be able to cover the scope of work and deliver quality results. To ensure the assessments produce quality results and recommendations, potential applicants will have to consider the main approaches mentioned below, when undertaking the scope of work.

• Conduct a desk review and analyse existing data and information about current/potential beneficiaries to provide an overview of the income level, education/vocational skills, and capacities, Household’s expenditures, coping mechanisms and financial risks management strategies. The assessment should also provide a clear picture of the challenges and barriers that women and youths (disaggregated by age and gender) are facing in accessing specific business, vocational employment and self-employment, and market opportunities in the target area with particular attention to gender considerations (informed by the issues outlined in the “expected outputs”).
• Design relevant questionnaires (adapted to integrate a strong gender lens) for women and men IDPs, as well host community members, government actors and coordinating bodies, as well as the humanitarian and development agencies working in the target locations.
• It would also be useful to have a brief picture/ analysis of various stakeholders such as the local authority/regional/central government policies, plans/strategies, and guidelines that explains the terms of access to labour/income earning opportunities, from a gender perspective.
• Conduct a Training Needs Assessment parallel to the GEM analysis to identify skills and knowledge gaps (disaggregated by gender and other intersectional factor when relevant) that can be improved with training within the specific value chains and propose an appropriate plan for vocational and entrepreneurship development training, taking into account the gender inequalities identified, including for collective empowerment.
• Conduct interviews to map out market actors and institutions operating and delivering goods and services in the area; the accessibility of vocational training, financial services, and business service providers (i.e., microfinance and vocational skills placement agencies, in any), and formal/informal networks or platforms if existing (or other initiatives) that support market and value-chain development and their gender dimensions (women’s inclusion/exclusion, leadership…)..
• Map existing markets and value-chains (Size of the markets, volume of sales, market integration/segmentation, supply and demand for products and services, etc, taking into account the gender issues outlined in the “expected outputs”).

Ethical requirements:

• There are risks in conducting interviews, particularly during a global pandemic. Participants may have difficulties taking the time to be interviewed amidst care and other responsibilities or face technical difficulties. We will work closely to continuously identify, assess, and monitor potential risks and unintended negative consequences, and decide if and how we should move forward with the data collection.
• In addition, care will be taken to maintain safe programming and safeguarding. Research participants will be provided with the necessary information about the project so that they can provide their informed consent (with the option of being able to retract it if the need arises) and will be provided with the mechanisms available to them in case a problem arises (Ethics Point, etc.). Data collection on household level dynamics in general or gender relations for instance can be sensitive, especially if answers touch upon issues of abuse: such situations should be anticipated and treated in compliance with relevant, internationally accepted ethical standards.
• Lastly, this project will follow responsible and ethical data policies,[1] including informed and voluntary consent. Interviewees will have the option to be anonymous if they so wish and may opt out of the project at any time. Data will be stored safely – with identifying information removed if requested – and will be deleted when no longer needed.

1. Expected Outputs and Timeline

The consulting firm/consultant is expected to deliver:

• A structured Expression of Interest (EOI) max-10 pages that provides details of the adopted methodology to be used during the assessment. Data collection tools must be attached as an annex.
• Make a presentation Max-25 Slides during an Inception meeting to discuss its EOI and submit a 5-pager inception report focusing on planned timeline and work plan, detailed methodology/ approach planned stakeholders to be consulted and sampling framework, data collection and analysis tools, qualitative and quantitative protocols for data collection and analysis.
• A 45-page report detailing methodology, data analysis and detailed results.
• 25-slide PPT presentation summery of the report.

Profile and Requirements of Consultant/Firm

• Oxfam requires a consulting firm/Consultant, a consortium with local academic institution is preferable, with demonstrated experience in engendered market studies and their applications (as a primary competence requirement), local-to-country wide value chains, technical and/or financial innovations, policy tools, and agricultural/livestock-based livelihoods value chains generally and demonstrated familiarity and integration of Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) frameworks.
• Given that a key focus of the assignment is to determine investment opportunities for crisis-affected women amongst the targeted communities, it is important that the firm/consultant has at least 5 years’ experience in working on/in private/NGO sector related assignments.
• The Consulting firm is encouraged to leverage existing connections and experience to efficiently gather information from various communities, women (especially in conservative contexts), public, private, academic, and non-governmental organisation (NGOs) sources of relevant information, in Diyala and Kirkuk.
• The Consultant is encouraged to provide details on the methodology to be used to collect and analyse the information required in the Technical Proposal. EOI Proposals showcasing relevant experience in the topics covered (i.e., WEE, resource efficiency, GEM, firm-level challenges and opportunities, value addition of agricultural products, private sector development etc.) and recent (< 5years) research conducted in developing countries in the middle east (i.e., local presence and/or established contacts) will be favoured.
• Consolidated experience in designing and implementing structured surveys to ensure statistical representativeness (engaging statisticians or partnering with a specialized firm) is mandatory pre-requisite for the submission of the proposals.
• The assignment should be completed within 60 days from the date of signing the contract. This period includes the review of the report by Oxfam and in parallel the adjustments if needed by the Consulting firm/Consultant. The latter must include in their EOI, a comprehensive workplan that outlines key achievements/deliverables during this timeline.

Below is a table explaining the expected outputs timeline from both Oxfam and Consulting Firm/Consultant:

Output

Deadline

Remarks

A structured Expression of Interest (EOI) max-10 pages

Before closure date of the announcement: 1 day

Refer to section III point 1 from the Consultant/Firm

Selection of Consulting firm/Consultant

2 days

By Oxfam

Inception meeting-Presentation of 25 slides max to explain the EOI and signing the contract

1 day

A meeting will be held in person or online with the Consultant/firm, a 5-Page Inception Report

Conducting the Assessment

38 days

By Consultant/Firm

Submission of a 45-page report detailing methodology, data analysis and detailed results

Submission of 20-slide PPT presentation summery of the report

8 days

By Consultant/Firm

Review and comments on the report

5 days

By Oxfam

Submission of the final version of the report and presentation after comments from Oxfam

5 days

By Consultant/Firm

1. Structure and Content of the Technical and Financial Proposal

Oxfam’s intention is for responses to be compact and focused, with limited tangential or partially relevant information. Outlined below are indications of preference in terms of the main sections of the technical and financial proposal which should be addressed:

1. Consulting firm’s Experience. Please be selective, choosing cases that are most directly relevant to this assignment, beginning with the strongest and most relevant cases.
2. Comments/Suggestions on the Terms of Reference. Highlight from your own experience how the approach may be improved.
3. Description of Approach, Methodology and Work Plan: Organization and Staffing.
4. Budget: Should be attached and includes all costs related to the assessment. The applicant needs to consider the costs related to data collectors, transportation, and communication fees.

The staffing sub-section should focus only on team members that have a substantial and concrete role in this assignment and costs be reflected in whole days. The methodology should not be an expansion of the TOR but should give details on how the firm will carry out the work.

Below is a table explaining the method of payment:

Instalments

Dates

Requirement for disbursement

1st: 30 %

XXXXX (Upon signing the contract)

A presentation of 25 slides maximum explaining the EoI, after inception meeting, and submission of a 5-page Inception Report

2nd: 30 %

XXXXX

Verification from the Oxfam Country team through monitoring visit that assessments are ongoing and addressing any operational gaps.

3rd: 40 %

XXXXX

After submission of the final report and detailed presentation.

[1] Oxfam’s Responsible Program Data Policy (2015). https://oxfam.app.box.com/s/upzivp7d34rvkmydvn5b2ca3t7mp0c57

How to apply

Interested consultants (individuals or consultancy companies), with relevant experience and skills based on the ToR, can submit their Expression of Interest (EOI), including the following:

1. Cover letter of no more than 1 page introducing the consultant and intention to deliver the assignment. The cover letter should also indicate the consultants’ availability for the proposed period.

2. The technical proposal should provide details on: a. the proposed methodology responding to the ToR and the deliverables;

3. The financial proposal includes a on-page budget of the offer, with detailed breakdown of all major anticipated costs: per cost category (e.g. daily fees, equipment, …); and per task/deliverable. An accompanying work plan must be submitted too.

Please submit the EOI and other documents [email protected] with GENDER, ENTERPRISE, AND MARKET(GEM) ASSESSMENT IN KIRKUK AND DIYALA on the subject line.

TOR LINK: https://jobs.oxfam.org.uk/vacancy/18078/description