Deadline for proposals: June 8, 2021
1. Rationale
The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General established the High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment in 2016 to bring together leaders from different constituencies—government, civil society, business and international organizations—to launch a shared global agenda that accelerates women’s economic participation and empowerment in support of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its promise that no one will be left behind. From the wealth and diversity of experience around the world, the High-Level Panel identified seven primary drivers of transformation. For each of these, the Panel highlights concrete actions and interventions that have demonstrated impact in reducing gender gaps—or suggest valuable potential based on experience and analysis to date.
The High-Level Panel’s first report called on all stakeholders to take action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to realize the benefits of women’s economic empowerment. The second report identified the top priority recommendations under each of the seven drivers of change and for the broader enabling environment. The Driver 1 aims to “Tackle adverse norms and promoting positive role models” by challenging and transforming the negative and harmful norms that limit women's access to work and that often devalue their work are core to achieving women’s economic empowerment. https://hlp-wee.unwomen.org/en/about/seven-drivers
As COVID-19 continues to affect lives and livelihoods around the world, we can already see that the pandemic and its economic fallout are having a regressive effect on gender equality. The Arab region is no exception to this trend where women will undoubtedly bear a disproportionate health risks and burden in terms of worsening poverty, reduced economic opportunities, access to information and distance learning as well as an increased gender-based violence. https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/04/the-impact-of-covid19-on-gender-equality-in-the-arab-region (2020)
The pandemic’s effect on gender equality is likely to reverberate through generations to come due to the unprecedented disruption to their education among girls and women. In this situation, championing female role models, and empowering the next generation of girls, has never been more important, by showing how they’ve been able to achieve success, setting great examples for others. Between 2016-2020, UN WOMEN, within its “HerStory” initiative, have trained 500 youth to collect and produced more than 5000 lifestories of women from a feminist perspective in partnership with Wikipedia. Online content emphasized the role of women and addressed the absence and exclusion of women from historical records over centuries that have minimized the roles women have played in history, politics, science, technology, leadership, and religion. https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/youth-and-innovation/herstory
Gender equality is one of UNESCO's two global priorities. UNESCO is committed to promoting gender equality by equipping girls and boys, women and men with the knowledge, values, attitudes and skills to tackle gender disparities as a precondition to building a sustainable future for all.
2. Call for Proposals
UNESCO Beirut, within its Social and Human Sciences programme, aims to promote positive role models for women to support young women’s career choices in the Arab region.
UNESCO Beirut launches a call for proposals which feed one or two following project priorities.
Priority one: Identification and Collection of life stories
Identification and collection of life stories will reflect the diversity of the Arab region1 and can build on 12 key areas for the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, where urgent action was needed to ensure greater equality and opportunities for women and men, girls and boys, can primarily serve to identify this research to focus: 1) Women and poverty; 2) Education and Training of Women; 3) Women and health; 4) Violence against women; 5) Women and Armed Conflict; 6) Women and the Economy; 7) Women in power and decision-making; 8) Insufficient mechanisms for the advancement of women; 9) Human rights of women; 10) Women and the media; 11) Women and the environment and 12) The girl-child
Furthermore, the research will include UNESCO’s programme areas in Education, Natural Science, Human and Social Sciences, Communication & Information, Culture. Profiles in Sport and Art can be added.
Priority two: Social media campaign to positively reverse stereotypes by disseminating Rolemodels lifestories
To share the collected life stories of women by organizing a social media campaign.
3. Eligibility
To be eligible for this Call, the following criteria need to be met:
- Civil society organization, NGO, Women’s association, Private university or centre (research, academic, etc.) based in the Arab region
- Youth involvement is encouraged
- Proposed activity able to be implemented immediately and to be finalized by December 2021.
- Previous experience in gender equality, research and social media campaign in the Arab region
- Capability to communicate and work well in both English and in Arabic.
4. How to Apply
Please download and complete the Word form in English and submit to Ms Carol Donabedian (cj.donabedian@unesco.org) no later than 8 June 2021.
If your proposal is selected for the next round, we will contact you within 2 weeks after the deadline. For any clarifications or inquiries, or for any additional documents you would like to submit in support of your application, please contact cj.donabedian@unesco.org
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1 Arab States region include: Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Oman & Bahrain.