| Overview : The UNDP Country Office in the Solomon Islands is implementing a behavioural insights project to bring tools and approaches from behavioural science to strengthen gender equality programming. Behavioural Insights combine behavioural economics, psychology, and neuroscience to better understand and explain human behaviour and decision-making. Applying behavioural insights can support the design of more effective public policies, processes, and services. It can improve organizational performance, and it can encourage citizens towards more positive social behaviours. Recognising that gendered social norms and stereotypes, and related attitudes and behaviour, present barriers to women’s equal political participation and access to justice the project will support interventions to address behavioural change for gender equality in these two areas. Through leveraging behavioural science techniques to (i) analyse the impact of these attitudes and behaviour on gender equality; (ii) design and implement interventions to address them and (iii) evaluate impact and use the results for iterative design of new interventions, the project aims to support more systematic and integrated approaches to gender equality programming, and greater evidence of impact. Women’s equal political participation The percentage of representation of women in elected bodies in the Pacific region is the lowest in the world. Solomon Islands currently has four women MPs out of 50 – the highest number ever elected. Despite this improvement in representation, participation of women in decision-making positions as well as political and socio-economical leaders is very limited, influenced by a perception that women’s leadership is not consistent with cultural values, and young women are particularly under-represented (for instance, the youngest female MP is 42). The project will build on the “Outstanding Women” initiative launched in 2019 as part of the Strengthening the Electoral Cycle in the Solomon Islands II project (SECSIP) in support of women leadership and gender sensitization, which responded to research on why women are not considered as skilled as men at being political leaders, and what women candidates need to win in their constituency. The initiative has been well received by international development partners as an innovative mechanism to promote gender awareness and women's leadership however, impact evaluation is required to use these findings as the basis for the further stages and scale-up of the intervention. The IC will conduct an impact analysis on the impact of the intervention and to support the strategy for the next phase of the initiative, with recommendations on behavioural science tools and methodologies to design further interventions and evaluate their impact. Specific consideration will be given to barriers facing young women and how interventions can be designed to strengthen the political participation of young women. Access to Justice The initiative seeks to address the perceived reluctance of women to access such support from the Public Solicitor’s Office (PSO) particularly during a land dispute (1.3%)[1]. This is despite the fact that 74% of women believe the formal justice system is the most effective forum for pursuing justice, however, only 33% use it.[2] The gender justice approach aims to enhance women’s ability to seek and obtain a remedy through formal or informal justice mechanisms in compliance with human rights standards guided by the principle of substantive gender equality. Working together with UN Women to strengthen women’s groups and involving the community, UNDP is supporting the PSO to raise awareness of the PSO and its services together with avenues to the formal justice system. This initiative will be implemented in locations where women have strong established women’s groups, where the PSO is accessible and where extensive awareness of the PSO and its services have already been undertaken, reducing some already existing barriers which women face when attempting to access the PSO. Specific attention will be paid to young women to identify whether they face additional barriers, and to design interventions accordingly. Lessons learned from the initiative will be leveraged for scale up in other provinces after the initial interventions are evaluated. The purpose of this Consultancy is to provide specialized technical support over a nine-month period to the design, development, testing, implementation, analysis and reporting of behavioural insight initiatives in relation to gender justice and women’s political participation. [1] UNDP Solomon Islands Access to Justice Study, 2019, page 20 [2] UNDP Solomon Islands Access to Justice Study, 2019, page 7 (2015 UN Women survey: A Seeking Redress: Challenges and Recommendations to increase Women's Access to Justice in Solomon Islands) Documentation required Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document: - Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided in Annex II.
- Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.
- Financial proposal, as per template provided in Annex II. Note: International consultants must quote prices in USD.
- High quality reports in English: Candidates should submit 2-3 reports in respect of criteria 5 above.
Incomplete proposals may not be considered. Annexes For any clarification regarding this assignment please write to procurement.sb@undp.org | 
