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UN Women has entered into an Agreement with Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to implement a project on women’s economic empowerment in the Eastern Caribbean. The project, “Build Back Equal” (BBE), which is led by UN Women and jointly implemented with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is being implemented, and will contribute to women’s economic resilience in the Eastern Caribbean by taking a comprehensive approach to addressing the barriers women face to economic empowerment and providing increased sustainable opportunities for women’s economic growth. Globally, women work 2.8 hours more than men on unpaid care and domestic work.1 This implies that women, and particularly the poorest and most disadvantaged, have the double burden of both paid and unpaid work, or in other words they are often more time poor than men. Women bear the multiple burdens of productive and reproductive responsibilities that severely limits their economic opportunities and remains a barrier to their engagement in paid work. Data on unpaid care work and specifically to measure SDG Indicator 5.4.1 (Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age and location) is sparse in CARICOM. However, the UN Women MCO-Caribbean is leading efforts to close this data gap in the region. Gender Aware Beneficiary Assessments (GABAs) of public assistance and social protection programmes in Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines reveal systemic gaps in the design and delivery of social protection systems.

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work

Under the overall supervision of the UN Women MCO - Caribbean Representative and directly reporting to the Deputy Representative, the Gender and Social Policy Expert will provide technical support for the design and development of a gender-responsive National Care Policy for Saint Lucia, ensuring coherence with broader social, labour, and family-friendly policies, and alignment with international gender equality, labour and women’s rights commitments, global and regional best practices.

The consultant will contribute to policy content, stakeholder consultations, and validation processes, with particular attention to the 5Rs framework (Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute, Reward, Represent care work) and to the links between care policy, women’s economic empowerment, labour rights and inclusive economic development.