2. Attachment J.1 Statement of Objectives.pdf

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 1

ATTACHMENT J.1

DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS / STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES

STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES FOR THE WOMEN’S ECONOMIC

EMPOWERMENT AND LEADERSHIP (WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT) ACTIVITY

This section provides a summary of the main features of the activity, including the overall goal, outcomes and outputs, where and when the program will be implemented, and cross-cutting issues that must be taken into account by the Contractor.

1. PURPOSE

The purpose of the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Leadership Activity (Women’s

Empowerment Activity) is to contribute to increasing women’s access to waged employment and leadership opportunities in Jordan by improving women’s access to the job market, addressing inequalities and prohibitive social norms and traditions, and enhancing the workforce enabling environment.

2. SCOPE

This Statement of Objectives (SOO) describes the objectives of USAID/Jordan’s five-year

Women’s Empowerment Activity to increase women’s waged employment and leadership in

Jordan. This SOO is provided in lieu of a U.S. Government statement of work and does not state how the work is to be accomplished, but instead provides potential contractors the flexibility and responsibility to propose innovative, cost-effective approaches to increase women’s employment and leadership in Jordan while meeting the stated objectives.

3. BACKGROUND

Unemployment in Jordan reached 19 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, with Jordan ranking as one of the world’s lowest female labor force participation rates. According to the Jordanian

Department of Statistics (DOS), in the fourth quarter of 2019, male unemployment rate reached

17.7 percent while female unemployment rate reached 24.1 percent. Unemployment for youth aged 15-19 and 20-24 is even more dire, recording the highest rates ever at 48.3 percent and 39.7 percent, respectively. Jordan ranks as one of the world’s lowest for women’s labor force participation, at only 13.5 percent1, despite their high education levels. An interesting factor of consideration is that nearly 75 percent of Jordanian women (in all age groups) are not seeking employment, although almost 40 percent indicate they would rather be working2. In fact, Jordan's ranking is 138 out of 153 countries in the 2020 global gender gap index, and the women's economic opportunities index is 145 out of 153 countries. Although women occupy around 50 percent of the labor force in the public sector, the percentage of females in higher and senior positions is significantly lower at less than 10 percent, with the exclusion of the education and health sectors which total 24 percent. Employment prospects for Jordanian women and youth

1 Department of Statistics (DOS), Directorate of Household Surveys, GOJ http://dos.gov.jo/dos_home_a/main/archive/unemp/2020/Emp_Q4_2019.pdf 2 USAID General Population Survey. 2019.

http://dos.gov.jo/dos_home_a/main/archive/unemp/2020/Emp_Q4_2019.pdf https://jordankmportal.com/

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 2 are considerably worse than for the population at large and are only expected to worsen with the significant negative impact on Jordan’s economy after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis3.

Several factors impede women’s participation and empowerment in the private sector job market, including weak structures (such as inadequate support services and a mismatch between education and the skills required by the labor market), prohibitive social norms (such as the families’ and society’s acceptance of women’s work and pervasive gendered roles with minimal burden sharing),4 and inequitable institutional and regulatory systems (such as lack of safe working environments with appropriate redress mechanisms, and limited representation of women in top level leadership roles in the public and private sector as well as associations and unions). Furthermore, women with disabilities face additional impediments to employment and are further discriminated against due to lack of accommodating infrastructure at work and gaps in the legal and regulatory frameworks that allow both public and private organizations to avoid the employment of persons with disabilities (PWDs).5

4. LINK TO MISSION STRATEGY AND U.S. GOVERNMENT PRIORITIES

USAID/Jordan strives to support and contribute to the Agency’s goals to reduce gaps between women and men and girls and boys based upon its Gender Equality and Female Empowerment

Policy, and the Secretary of State’s Policy Guidance on Promoting Gender Equality.

Investing in women and unleashing their potential builds resilient, self-reliant, and prosperous societies. This is in line with USAID’s Policy Framework and Journey to Self-Reliance approach, the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act of 2018, the

Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), the USAID Economic

Growth Policy, and the Private Sector Engagement Policy. Reduction of barriers to entry that prevent women from working in certain sectors, increasing women’s income, and eliminating workplace discrimination augments gender equality. Investments in gender equality and increasing the presence of women leaders fosters family and community well-being, while simultaneously increasing and promoting productivity and providing vital pathways to self-reliance. Doing so through market-based approaches in collaboration with the private sector helps shape solutions that achieve sustained impact.

USAID/Jordan’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) 2020-2025 has identified key gender constraints and has incorporated interventions into policy discussions and decision-making processes at the national level, thus making the Government of Jordan (GOJ) and Civil

Society Organizations (CSO) more accountable and responsive to women across Jordan.

Development Objective (DO) 5, “Agency and Leadership of Women and Youth Enhanced,” and

Development Objective (DO) 1, “Inclusive Private Sector-Led Growth” under USAID/Jordan’s

3 ILO. COVID-19 and the world of work: Impact and policy responses. March 2020 4 World Bank. Understanding How Gender Norms in MNA Impact Female Employment Outcomes. June 2018.

Also, UN WOMEN. Women Working: Jordanian and Syrian Refugee Women’s Labour Force Participation and

Attitudes Towards Employment. August 2016.

5 Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). Silent Women: Harassment Problems in the

Workplace. November 2018. Also, Jordanian Economic and Social Council. Jordan State of the Country Report

(Arabic). December 2018. And, World Bank. Economic Participation, Agency and Access to Justice in Jordan. July

2013.

http://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20office%20jordan/attachments/publications/jordanian%20and%20syrian%20refugee.pdf?la=en&vs=1300 http://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20office%20jordan/attachments/publications/jordanian%20and%20syrian%20refugee.pdf?la=en&vs=1300 https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/67519.pdf https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/67519.pdf http://www.esc.jo/Contents/state-reportar.aspx http://www.esc.jo/Contents/state-reportar.aspx http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/503361468038992583/pdf/ACS51580WP0P130ox0379850B00PUBLIC0.pdf

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 3

CDCS both aim to achieve several sub-results which positively impact the status of Jordanian women in the economic sector, and advance their access to and participation in employment opportunities.

5. LINK TO GOVERNMENT OF JORDAN PRIORITIES

Jordan’s national and sub-national governmental levels took several serious measures and actions to influence improved female employment. National strategies have focused on women’s employment and established action plans for interventions and implementations. These strategies intersect and complement each other in tackling different angles of the low employment rate of

Jordanian women. The National Strategy for Women in Jordan (2020–2025), Jordan 2025 (A

National Vision and Strategy), the National Strategy for Human Resource Development (2016 –

2025), the Jordan Economic Growth Plan (2018–2022), the Renaissance Plan (2019–2020), and the “Turning the Corner - Jordan’s Path to Growth Five Year Matrix” are some of the GOJ’s major strategies and action plans that emphasize the need to increase the participation of women in the labor force and eliminate obstacles to employment. These strategies list areas of concern and relevant mitigation measures that cover women’s equality in education and training including the Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) sector, decision making, human resources, public-private synergies, complaint systems, digital economy, and structural reforms.

6. PERFORMANCE OF OBJECTIVES

The performance objectives listed below reflect USG’s and GOJ’s shared priorities on women’s empowerment. They are interlinked, mutually reinforcing, and of equal importance. Offerors should factor overlapping elements in designing their approach so that the Activity is implemented in a cohesive manner.

For the successful achievement of women’s empowerment under this Activity, women must attain the agency6 to exercise their rights, make their own choices, and plan their future.

Addressing the objectives of this Activity is complex (specially to mitigate some of the shocks of the COVID-19 crisis on women’s employment), but if done correctly will result in positive development outcomes. While there are three objectives below, this does not necessarily mean

Offerors must divide the management of their program into three separate components. Offerors are free to propose any project structure that would meet the stated objectives.

The targets and performance standards will be submitted by Offerors and agreed upon with the apparently successful Offeror prior to award.

Objective 1: Improve women’s access to jobs in the private sector and leadership opportunities in the private and public sectors

The purpose of Objective 1 is to improve women’s access to job opportunities and leadership positions so that they may play an active role in the workforce and in the economy at large. Even when women participate in the labor market, for the most part they face considerable

6 Agency means the ability to employ their assets and aspirations to make or influence their own decisions about their lives and set their own goals, as well as to act upon those decisions in order to achieve desired outcomes.

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 4 impediments for professional growth and rarely attain leadership, supervisory, or managerial roles.

Offerors must propose plans that will promote women’s increased access to job opportunities in the private sector and leadership positions in both public and private sectors, especially in sectors in which women have not traditionally participated. These plans will address and overcome impediments to women’s economic empowerment and leadership to improve their access to, retainment of and growth within jobs. USAID expects development and testing of new, innovative approaches or the scale-up of proven, market-driven approaches that take into consideration the geographic and socio-economic contexts, voluntary and involuntary unemployment challenges, and sustainability into the future. While the focus of this Activity is waged employment in the formal sectors, targeted work in the informal sector could be included.

Objective 2: Improve supported perceptions, practices, and advocacy

The purpose of Objective 2 is to improve Jordanian perceptions of women's active participation in the workplace as well as advance advocacy efforts on women's behalf within the society. Jordanian women are constrained by gender-related bias. Cultural norms and gendered roles shape the engagement of women in the different aspects of daily and economic spectrums in Jordan, and they are mainly behind why women’s employment is highest in specific sectors.

Furthermore, women are wrongly perceived as less skillful than men in performing duties and job requirements, especially when it comes to decision-making and leadership roles. Women’s self-perceptions are not better in this regard as they are raised to be risk averse and have low self-esteem.7

Offerors must develop interventions to address cultural and social impediments and suggest innovative interventions that will reverse the prohibitive cultural norms and practices, prevent reinforcing gendered roles and applaud burden sharing by women and men, encourage the private sector to employ and cultivate women to be leaders, and equip women and girls with the life and advocacy skills they need to succeed. Offerors will target the Jordanian community at large, including men, family, and community leaders, to enhance the image of working women as equal contributors to society and economic development. Offerors must also engage with the private sector employers with an aim to change unfounded perceptions about women’s capabilities and ambitions, and showcase the net benefit women bring to businesses. Proposed approaches must be customized to address different contexts (such as geographic and socio-economic contexts, voluntary and involuntary unemployment challenges, and women with disabilities).

Objective 3: Stimulate and enforce more equitable, safe, and accessible working environments

The purpose of Objective 3 is to create a more equitable and safer working environment for women in Jordan to contribute to increasing their participation in the workforce and economic activity. Policies and regulatory frameworks have not been adequately supportive of gender equality in the workplace. Even those that are advocating for women’s rights have not been

7 European Training Foundation. Increasing Female Participation In Employment Through Vocational Education

And Training In Jordan. 2016.

https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/m/13B3612BD2694D28C125802000327DE9_PRIME%20Issues%20Paper%20Jordan.pdf https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/m/13B3612BD2694D28C125802000327DE9_PRIME%20Issues%20Paper%20Jordan.pdf

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 5 sufficiently and widely enforced on the institutional level. Women who are seeking employment are confronted with a number of obstacles that directly or indirectly affect their hiring, training, pay, promotion and work-life balance.

Offerors must propose innovative interventions that will incentivize women’s participation in the economy and stimulate more equitable and safer working environments and public spaces. This could range from influencing broad, national-level women-friendly regulatory reform initiatives and establishing sustainable mechanisms for enforcement and execution of laws and regulations, to partnering with model private sector firms to integrate gender equality into their institutional mandates and systems and capitalizing on the lessons-learned from the recent COVID-19 crisis.

It is equally important to encourage and guarantee the active involvement, buy-in, and implementation of the private sector and showing that whichever system is to be adopted will not only foster participation, but will notably inspire others to replicate and maintain adopted systems.

Furthermore, Offerors must highlight the role of supportive systems – such as civil society, professional associations, and unions – in effectively advocating for women’s employment rights and benefits at the workplace, especially in incidents of inequalities and discrimination.

Although this Activity is not targeting new startups and entrepreneurs, Offerors could propose interventions that advance their working environment and conditions in order to preserve women’s rights and benefits. Finally, Offerors are expected to integrate interventions for the prevention and protection from gender-based violence, especially in the workplace and public spheres.

7. General Consideration and Additional Requirements:

a. Coordination

Since working on women’s employment is one of the most crowded spaces in gender and economic growth programming in Jordan, and women’s employment rates have been stagnant for the past decade at around 13 to15 percent8, Offerors need to highlight in the technical approach, Performance Work Statement (PWS) and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) approach how their suggested interventions distinguish them and yield the best results. Offerors must demonstrate a thorough understanding of the current landscape of ongoing programs by

USAID, other donors, the GOJ, and local civil society and highlight those programs’ impacts and results. They must also include how this USAID intervention can bridge gaps and/or offer unique complimenting value in programming/assistance from other donors and can deliver outcomes of services/products that will enhance women’s economic empowerment and leadership in Jordan in a meaningful way that will enable them to grow and expand beyond the life of this Activity.

b. Gender and Inclusive Development

Strong barriers, many cultural, to the participation of women and PWDs in the formal economy still remain. Surveys demonstrate bias against hiring women, the low female participation and representation among business and firm owners, and dominant long standing cultural beliefs

8 World Economic Forum. The Global Gender Gap Report. 2018.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2018.pdf

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 6 about the abilities and skills of women and PWDs and the role they can or should play in the workforce.9

Proposed activities must take cultural norms into consideration in order to ensure equal impact, capture learning, promote gender neutrality, and advance a Do-No-Harm approach ensuring the security and integrity of staff and direct and indirect beneficiaries. Gender equality and inclusive development principles must be well incorporated in the Offerors’ programming and organizational structures as reflected in the PWS and technical approach and be modeled by their partners and beneficiaries. Achieving the objectives of this Activity involves working with women and girls as well as men and boys to bring about change at home, in the workplace, and in the community.

Offerors should take into consideration the unique needs of the different demographic groups and geographic areas in Jordan, and accordingly propose relevant responsive interventions. This

Activity is inclusive of all persons residing in Jordan, as long as working with them is well justified based on needs, adequately explained in the Offeror’s PWS, and reflected in the

Activity’s monitoring of these persons.

c. Sustainability to Advance Self-Reliance

Fostering self-reliance through sustainability is a key component of this Activity to ensure that the suggested solutions are supported and maintained by the relevant counterparts once the

Activity has ended. The Activity focus areas must orient Jordan’s development roadmap towards self-reliance. Thus, self-reliance and sustainability will be an integral part of the proposed interventions in the PWS and are expected to start with each of the above mentioned objectives and continue throughout the implementation and beyond.

A guiding principle of this Activity is to support the core USAID value of building local capacity and work through local solutions (that are customized to geographic and socioeconomic needs) to advance commitment. These efforts would advance Jordan’s journey to self-reliance and help it plan, finance, and implement solutions to address its own development challenges. Offerors must propose in the PWS and technical approach creative approaches that substantively involve strategic local public, private, civil society, and religious stakeholders in all phases of this

Activity, including planning and implementation.

Through the different interventions proposed in the PWS, sustainability will be highly embedded in order to ensure a steady flow of laws, regulations, policies and procedures are maintained and continued. Institutionalized practices and processes, building and maintaining partnerships, onboarding local partners who have not worked with USAID before, utilizing existing resources, exploring new opportunities, involving the community, and developing exit strategies for interventions from inception are key to guarantee sustainability of this component for the long term. Offerors must reflect such approaches in their work plans, monitoring and learning plans, and, to the extent possible, in the Activity’s management structure.

Sustainability must be emphasized when working with GOJ institutions: reforms must command a sufficiently broad constituency to hold up through changes in administration. Approaches to implementation should be flexible to adapt to changes in priorities. Offerors are requested to

9 USAID Private Sector Survey. 2018.

https://jordankmportal.com/collections/jordan-private-sector-survey-gaining-insight-and-understating-into-the-needs-of-the-jordanian-private-sector

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 7 present and demonstrate that they are aware of and will be actively working to find key sustainability champions in partner institutions early in program implementation.

Simultaneously, avenues must be sought to ensure viability of approaches to empowering

Jordanian women and improving their access and retainment of jobs.

Offerors are required to present in the PWS and technical approach a sustainability and exit strategy for each intervention that will provide, among other things, the methodology by which each objective will continue to be effectively functioning beyond USAID assistance under this

Activity. This will include, but is not limited to: who will lead the work and how, what resources will be used, and how the government and private sector will continue the initiatives applying the know-how they acquired through the life of the Activity. It will also highlight which elements would be unlikely to be feasibly sustained without additional external support at the conclusion of the Activity. The plan must be designed to start with each intervention to ensure its practicality and institutionalization and will also be documented in the monitoring, evaluation, and learning plans.

d. Grants Under Contract

The Offeror may propose, as part of the PWS and technical approach, a Grants-Under-Contract

(GUC) mechanism of up to $5 Million to help address the challenges articulated in this solicitation and to engage multiple partners, including local partners new to USAID, in achieving the stated objectives. These monetary grants are a tool to, among other things, directly engage organizations in the implementation of defined tasks of this Activity, complement and build upon the original work of grant recipients in areas relevant to this Activity, and support research work.

Such could be made to local non-government organizations (NGOs), international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), the private sector, academic and research institutions, and think tanks. Only in-kind contributions can be made to partner government entities. The approach could include an element of cost-sharing as well as public-private partnerships.

Illustrative anticipated results under the GUC component could include:

○ Increase in availability of sustainable and affordable support services.

○ Improved perceptions of women's active participation in the workplace.

○ Well-positioned institutions to advocate for local interests regarding women's economic empowerment and leadership.

○ Increase in availability of rigorous analysis and research, done by local researchers and utilized for informed decision-making.

○ Capacity to design, lead, and/or implement certain interventions or provide specialized services.

e. Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA)

Offerors must propose in their MEL approach how Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation

(CLA) principles will be reflected throughout their proposed interventions. They must propose how collaboration with stakeholders, beneficiaries, counterparts and other USAID activities will be approached; how learning will be reflected by project staff; how that learning will be captured, shared, and utilized; and, how the activity will translate collaboration and learning to

Attachment J.1 - RFP 72027820R00009 Women’s Empowerment Activity 8 needed adaptation. They will state how their CLA approach will serve as a base for learning and knowledge sharing, as well as how the Offeror will capture the change brought about by activity interventions, learn and share what worked and what did not. The CLA approach must describe how the Offeror will apply flexibility and timely responsiveness that enables the Offeror to refine activity work plans and interventions to respond to changing conditions and opportunities over the life of the Activity. Offerors must present how they will coordinate with other activities and co-develop their annual co-work plans in concert with other implementers to amplify synergies and complementarity and reduce duplication with other USAID and donor activities. At a minimum, Offerors will conduct annual co-work planning with complementary USAID/Jordan activities which are expected to include, but are not limited to, the forthcoming Business Growth

Activity10, the Economic Reform Activity11, and the USAID Takamol Activity. Offerors must propose a co-work planning approach for coordination with the above activities as well as a commitment to co-work plan with additional activities as they begin.

f. Activity Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)

To track progress and inform program decision-making, monitoring, evaluation, and learning will be a core focus of this Activity. Monitoring the program must, to the extent possible, utilize existing monitoring and evaluation frameworks and systems used by the GOJ and international reporting requirements. The Contractor must implement a robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning system based on rigorous data collection, timely reporting, and adaptive management.

Adequate data are available from local and international data sources and should be used by the

Contractor, as appropriate, as a baseline for this Activity. Testing innovative approaches and scaling them up will be maximized as an opportunity for learning and adapting. Data-gathering under this program will also be used by contractors as a capacity-building exercise for the GOJ, to complement interventions across all objectives. Since the concepts of both CLA and MEL are intrinsically interlinked, Offerors can present in their MEL approach interconnected approaches for both requirements. USAID will conduct an evaluation of the Activity utilizing a third party.

The Contractor will, therefore, ensure full cooperation with the external evaluation teams.

g. Communication Strategy

In addition to the required Branding Implementation Plan and Marking Plan, Offerors will develop and implement a communication strategy that supports the USG, USAID, and GOJ messaging on women’s economic participation. The plan is expected to be clearly linked to the

Activity objectives and workplan and will include a monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure that attitude and behavior change targets are met. Public outreach should be taken into consideration in Activity Sustainability and Exit Strategies.

10 Please see Attachment J.6 for more information on Business Growth Request for Information.

11 Please see Attachment J.7 for more information on Economic Reform Activity Request for Proposals.