Table 11. Joint office gender monitoring activities

TABLE 11. Joint office gender monitoring activities

Activity

Gender Committee meetings Progress toward Strategy and objectives achievement based on annual plan activities and indicators

CPD outputs with Gender Marker

CPD gender-oriented indicators Frequency Means of Verification

Quarterly Meeting minutes

Annually Local gender annual reports

Annually

Annually Results-oriented annual report (ROAR) ROAR; UNInfo; Country Office Annual Report; Strategic Monitoring Questions

Data Source: Cabo Verde Gender Strategy 2020-2022

In March 2020, the joint office established a gender committee to help ensure the implementation of a gender mainstreaming mechanism within the office, based on the Gender Strategy. This committee drafted a workplan, which includes training and publications. Implementation of the Gender Action Plan was dispersed across the workplans of the Portfolios. Furthermore, the United Nations country team created the Gender and Human Rights working Group (GHRwG), coordinated by the joint office, into which the activities and plans of the gender committee were subsumed.

The joint office participated in the GHRwG to provide guidance on the promotion of human rights and gender mainstreaming for the achievement of UNSDCF strategic objectives. UN women acted as the GHRwG lead throughout UNSDCF 2018-2022, but after the closure of the UN women programme in Cabo Verde in March 2020 the working Group became inactive. Various temporary ad hoc task forces were created to address priorities for 2020, namely on PSEA and disabilities, but the Resident Coordinator and United Nations country team agreed to identify co-lead agencies and reactivate the working group.

The GHRwG is critical to assist the United Nations response to its system-wide responsibilities on gender and human rights, and needs to be fully operational. There is a PSEA task force within the UNDAF to work with the national counterpart, led by FAO to ensure balance in the distribution of responsibilities within UNDAF. Another task force on the inclusion of people with disabilities is coordinated by the joint office.

At operations level, gender parity was considered in the composition of procurement assessment committees and human resources processes. The joint office integrated gender into the recruitment process (including vacancy announcements, terms of reference, interview questions) to ensure that candidates and newly-recruited personnel have functional gender competencies. In terms of training, at the time of this evaluation 78 percent of staff had completed the course “The Gender Journey: Thinking outside the box”.

In October 2021, the joint office achieved staff gender parity overall, with 58 percent female and 42 percent male staff (see Figure 18). Gender parity by contract type was also achieved, with 57 percent of fixed term appointments and 56 percent of permanent appointments held by women. However, only 33 percent of senior management staff are female, and 67 percent are male.65 The highest percentage of women is concentrated at intermediate level, with 100 percent of ‘NOC’ level staff female and 71 percent of ‘G6’ level.

65 Female staff: one P4, three NOB (total four women) = 33 percent; Male staff: one D1, two P5, one P3, one NOB (total eight men) = 67 percent.