Consultant to Develop Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Transformative Care Economy Objectives into African Development Bank Operations

About the role

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.

Globally, women undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, providing three-quarters of all unpaid care hours. These responsibilities significantly impact women’s participation in the labor market due to unpaid care responsibilities. Women who do enter the paid workforce often face additional barriers such as the gender pay gap due to reduced wages, and limited leadership opportunities due to caregiving responsibilities. Yet, care work is essential to societies and economies to support the well-being of individuals and communities. It is estimated that the global monetary value of women’s unpaid care work is $10.8 trillion annually, three times the size of the world’s tech industry.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women spend 3.4 times more time on unpaid care work than men, limiting their access to education, decent employment, and participation in public life. If unpaid care work were assigned a monetary value, it would constitute 7.2% of GDP in Ethiopia, 7.9% in Tanzania, and 8.8% in South Africa. Despite its critical importance, care work remains unrecognized and undervalued, entrenched in patriarchal norms that consider it a woman's duty.

Growing global and regional evidence demonstrates that investments in care systems and care-supportive infrastructure can generate multiple development benefits, including increased labor force participation, improved productivity, enhanced human capital outcomes, job creation, and greater resilience of households and communities. Recognizing these links, governments, development finance institutions, and multilateral development banks are increasingly integrating care considerations into development policies, strategies, and investment portfolios.

This agenda is particularly critical in transition countries and fragile contexts, where conflict, displacement, climate shocks, economic instability, and institutional fragility fundamentally reshape care needs and intensify unpaid care burdens. In these settings, care systems often become disrupted or collapse altogether, while public service delivery weakens and households absorb the resulting deficits. Women and girls frequently act as shock absorbers, taking on increased responsibilities for childcare, elder care, care for injured or displaced family members, water and fuel collection, and household subsistence activities. These intensified care demands often reduce women’s ability to engage in education, income-generating activities, entrepreneurship, and participation in recovery and peacebuilding processes.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has made significant commitments to advancing gender equality and inclusive growth through its Gender Strategy, Ten-Year Strategy, and sectoral investments in infrastructure, agriculture, water, energy, human capital development, governance, and private sector development. Many of these sectors have direct implications for reducing and redistributing unpaid care work and improving access to quality care services. The Bank recognizes the centrality of gender equality to accelerating inclusive economic growth. Despite this strategic relevance, unpaid and paid care economy considerations are not yet systematically reflected across the Bank’s country diagnostics, Country Strategy Papers, project preparation processes, sector work, results frameworks, and portfolio dialogue.

Objective

The overall objective of the consultancy is to develop practical, operational guidelines that enable the systematic integration of care economy considerations across the Bank’s strategies, dialogue, and operations. The guidelines will support Bank staff and Regional Member Countries to:

• Identify care-related constraints, risks, and opportunities throughout the project cycle.
• Design investments that reduce, redistribute, recognize, reward, and represent care work.
• Expand access to quality care services and care-supportive infrastructure.
• Promote decent care jobs.
• Strengthen gender equality, inclusive growth, and resilience.

The guidelines will include sector-specific entry points, diagnostic questions, screening tools, project design options, sample indicators, case examples, and implementation pathways that position care as both an economic enabler and a resilience-building investment in contexts affected by conflict, climate shocks, displacement, and institutional fragility.

Responsibilities

• Review relevant Bank strategic and operational instruments, including the Ten-Year Strategy, Gender Strategy, Gender Marker System, Results Measurement Framework, sector strategies, transition and fragility guidance, and relevant documents.
• Conduct a rapid portfolio and sector strategy scan to identify existing and potential care-related entry points across sectors, including agriculture, energy, water and sanitation, transport, education and skills, human development, governance, urban development, and private sector development.
• Identify opportunities to integrate care considerations into upstream diagnostics, policy dialogue, project concept notes, appraisal reports, results frameworks, gender analyses, and implementation support.
• Develop a practical guideline package that includes sector-specific entry points, screening questions, design options, sample indicators, illustrative theory of change pathways, case studies from the Bank and other development finance institutions, and examples from fragile and transition contexts.
• Prepare a concise implementation note outlining how the guidelines can be used by Bank task teams, gender specialists, sector departments, regional offices, and Regional Member Countries, including recommendations for capacity building, dissemination, and integration into existing operational processes.

Deliverables

• Inception Report and Workplan (30% payment):
  • Detailed methodology, workplan, consultation plan, proposed outline of the guidelines, preliminary document list, and proposed approach for aligning the guidelines with Bank operational processes.
• Diagnostic and Portfolio Analysis Note:
  • Review of Bank strategies, operational instruments, sector policies, country programming tools, results frameworks, and gender mainstreaming instruments.
  • Rapid scan of selected Bank-financed operations to identify existing care-related practices, missed opportunities, and scalable entry points.
  • Mapping of sector-specific care entry points, including opportunities in transition and fragile contexts.
  • Summary of consultations with selected Bank staff, UN Women, and relevant technical partners.
• Draft Operational Guidelines for Integrating the Care Economy into Bank Operations (30% payment):
  • A strategic framing of the care economy in relation to the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy, gender equality commitments, and operational priorities.
  • A practical operational framework translating the 5R framework (reduce, redistribute, recognize, reward, represent) into Bank country programming, project design, policy dialogue, and results management.
  • Sector-specific entry points, screening tools, project design options, sample results indicators, implementation checklists, and examples of good practice from AfDB, other multilateral development banks (MDBs), and global practice. This includes guidance on integrating care-responsive approaches into investments in transition and fragile contexts.
  • A short implementation note on uptake, dissemination, staff capacity building, and integration into existing Bank operational tools.
• Validation Workshop and Presentation Materials (40% payment):
  • PowerPoint presentation and facilitation materials summarizing the diagnostic findings, proposed guideline structure, tools, and implementation recommendations for validation by Bank and UN Women stakeholders.
• Final Operational Guidelines:
  • Revised guidelines incorporating feedback from the validation workshop.

Suggested Structure of the Guidelines

• Strategic rationale: Why care matters for inclusive growth and the Bank’s operational priorities.
• Operational framework: How the 5R framework can be translated into Bank-financed investments.
• Sector guidance: Sectoral entry points, practical menus, and design options of care-responsive interventions for sectors including agriculture, energy, water, transport, education, human development, private sector, and governance.
• Tools and templates: Diagnostic questions, screening checklist, results indicators, risk mitigation prompts, consultation guide, and sample language for project documents.
• Implementation and institutionalization: Recommendations for dissemination, staff orientation, integration with existing gender tools, and monitoring of uptake across the portfolio.

Workplace

This is a home-based assignment.