Hours: Full-time

Location: Remote Eligible

Salary: Commensurate with required and qualifications (GS-13 equivalent)

Anticipated Travel: Up to 20%

About WI-HER

WI-HER is a woman-owned small business based in Northern Virginia. Our diverse global team is committed to delivering effective and equitable change through innovative solutions that are human-centered, sustainably delivered, transparently managed, and consistently documented. Our focus on tailored capacity development and rigorous monitoring and evaluation processes ensures excellence and impact in all of our programs across various sectors— while our small size brings flexibility and speed in response to our client needs.

Project Overview

WI-HER is implementing a 5-year institutional support contract to the USAID Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation (DDI) Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Hub (GenDev). The multi-million dollar contract provides institutional support services to engage subject matter experts and technical expertise to support efforts related to gender integration and equality in the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of USAID programming.

Background

The United States Agency for International Development's (USAID's) Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Hub (GenDev), is one of five Hubs within the Bureau for Inclusive Growth, Partnerships, and Innovation (IPI). GenDev advances gender equality and women's empowerment as fundamental for the realization of human rights, and key to effective and sustainable development outcomes. The Hub collaborates with Operating Units (OUs) across the Agency supporting USAID's programming globally, in all sectors. It promotes evidence-based gender equality and women's empowerment programming throughout the Agency through its technical outreach and thought leadership, training, technical assistance, and communications outreach. In particular, GenDev collaborates closely with the Office of the Chief Economist to synthesize impact evidence on the most cost-effective approaches to advance gender equity in the development objectives that USAID pursues.

The independent Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) supports USAID in improving the effectiveness of its programming by bringing stronger economic evidence, theory, and tools to bear on the Agency's work. Toward this end, OCE (1) promotes the use of high-quality evidence on “cost-effectiveness” (i.e., how much impact does an intervention deliver per dollar spent) in Agency decision-making; (2) promotes the generation of more cost-effectiveness evidence that the Agency is uniquely placed to catalyze; and (3) provides analysis and advice to Agency leadership on pressing macroeconomic issues. This position is a Gender Evidence Advisor in the OCE. They will support the gender equality and women's empowerment goals of the Agency by ensuring that data on gender equitable outcomes is used throughout OCE's reviews of cost-effectiveness evidence. Incorporating gender-sensitive evidence into OCE's reviews will ensure that gender equity is advanced via recommendations about cost-effective programs across all sectors of USAID's work.

Relevant USAID Objectives

• Gender Equality : Reduce gender disparities in who accesses, controls, and benefits from economic, social, political, legal, educational, health, and cultural resources, as well as wealth, opportunities, and services; and
• Evidence Use : Support the Agency in shifting toward more cost-effective approaches by increasing the use of evidence of cost-effectiveness in Agency decision-making, including evidence grounded in behavioral science.

_Position Objectives _

The Gender Evidence Advisor will support OCE efforts to increase the use of impact evidence in program decision-making, with a particular focus on identifying the differential impact of interventions on key development outcomes for men and women, boys and girls. They will also support USAID to generate more evidence on gender differences in program impacts, where there are strategic gaps. This will involve exciting opportunities to collaborate with technical teams and Missions across the Agency on the gender-specific dynamics of programming in many sectors, as well as identify opportunities to strengthen processes, policies, systems, and capacity to consider gender in both evidence use and generation.

Scope of Work

• Following OCE's standard approach, plan and carry out syntheses of cost-effectiveness evidence on advancing gender equity for specific development outcomes

• Stay abreast of the latest global randomized evaluation evidence from academia and other research institutes and identify new opportunities to apply insights from emerging evidence on gender equity to USAID's work

• Develop work products from these evidence syntheses that can be used by a wide range of stakeholders within the Agency to improve a wide range of Agency programs

• Coordinate with the Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the Office of the Administrator, stakeholders in USAID Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Hub, and Bureau/Mission Gender Advisors, to understand topics of strategic interest where evidence synthesis could meaningfully advance USAID's objectives around gender equality

• Make recommendations to technical Bureaus, Missions, and other Operating Units on how they can assess program effectiveness and cost-effectiveness at promoting gender equality, via formal evidence syntheses as well as on-demand from counterparts around USAID

• Provide ongoing, hands-on support to Missions, to understand their needs and identify contextually relevant interventions that will improve progress towards gender equality through greater use of evidence and generation of evidence

• Support the development of internal and external communication products about cost-effectiveness evidence on gender equity in specific sectors, and OCE's work on evidence generation and use

• Prepare updates for senior USAID leadership on the status of work to identify “Good Buys” for advancing gender equality in different sectors, develop evidence syntheses with Agency collaborators, and informing USAID programming

• Represent the Office of the Chief Economist in gender-focused forums, both internally and externally, highlighting the role that cost-effectiveness evidence can play in meaningfully advancing gender equality goals across a variety of sectors

The day-to-day management direction and oversight for this position will be provided by the Deputy Director for Evidence Use in the Office of the Chief Economist, working in coordination with a designated member of GenDev staff.

As a contractor, this position will not perform “inherently governmental functions,” including the supervision of non-contractor personnel, or the signature/approval/authorization of commitments on behalf of the US Government. _

Minimum Qualifications_

• Master's degree in economics, public policy, or a related field plus five years of relevant experience generating or applying impact evidence on international development programs;
• Experience reviewing and summarizing evidence on program impacts and cost-effectiveness in international development, humanitarian work, or a related field;
• Familiarity with impact evidence on gender equality in at least one area of USAID's work, e.g. gender equality in education, gender equality in labor markets, etc.;
• Experience reading impact evaluations of development programs, particularly randomized controlled trials, and drawing conclusions based on statistical evidence;
• Strong writing skills;
• Strong attention to detail;
• Ability to work well independently and as part of a team, in a fast-paced environment with competing and shifting priorities.
• Ability to efficiently multitask and prioritize workload accordingly;
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships and interact with people at all management and support levels;
• Ability to prepare and deliver high-quality documents and presentations;
• Strong work ethic with a solid customer service focus; and,
• Familiarity with Microsoft and Google Suite of products.

Preferred Qualifications:

• U.S. Government/USAID experience or knowledge of how USAID works;
• Experience synthesizing evidence from impact evaluations to provide recommendations for effective programming in a given sector;
• Experience working in an international development context.

If interested, please submit your application by March 22, 2024. Applications will be reviewed and interviews scheduled on a rolling basis, so we encourage interested applicants to apply as soon as possible.

WI-HER is committed to fostering a diverse, multicultural work environment and welcomes a range of backgrounds, life experiences, perspectives, and opinions. WI-HER provides equal employment to all and has zero tolerance towards discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, disability, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by state or federal laws.