Brief about the Project

The THRIVE Project has been developed alongside the DG MENA-WASL Project to strengthen climate-resilient livelihoods and inclusive agriculture systems in Taiz Governorate through an integrated watershed management approach. The program adopts an area-based strategy that recognizes the interdependence between natural resources, agriculture production, local institutions and market systems. The project is implemented by a consortium of international and national partners under the leadership of SI, alongside BCFHD and Al Tawasul. Under the SDC-funded component, the project directly supports efforts to improve local market resilience, agriculture production and gender equity.

The THRIVE Project requires an implementation-oriented assessment to better understand the opportunities, barriers, and enabling conditions for women's economic empowerment within the target districts.

Objectives of the Consultancy Assignment

The overall objective of this assignment is to conduct a comprehensive Women's Economic Empowerment, Agency and Enterprise Ecosystem Assessment that generates the evidence required to strengthen women's economic inclusion and inform the THRIVE Project's implementation. Specifically, the assessment aims to:

• Assess women's roles, participation, leadership, agency, bargaining power, and decision-making across relevant agricultural and livestock activities, value-chain functions, post-harvest activities, value addition and enterprise development with a focus on the priority value chains selected through the program process.
• Assess women's access to and control over productive assets, natural resources, agricultural inputs, technologies, extension services, information, financial services, VSLAs, enterprise financing, and digital financial ecosystems, and identify barriers to their economic participation, financial inclusion, and resilience.
• Analyse the social, institutional, cultural, household and gender-related factors influencing women's economic empowerment, including gender norms, mobility restrictions, unpaid care responsibilities, literacy and digital literacy, intra-household decision-making, control over resources and income.
• Identify the specific constraints, risks, vulnerabilities, and economic opportunities affecting women from different social groups, including female-headed households, young women, women with disabilities, IDPs, Muhamasheen communities, and women breadwinners.
• Assess safeguarding, economic violence, exploitation, indebtedness, exclusion, elite capture, and other risks affecting women's safe participation in livelihoods, enterprise development, financial inclusion, and market systems.
• Assess and map the gender-relevant enterprise and financial ecosystem influencing women's economic empowerment, identifying practical opportunities for sustainable market engagement and partnership.
• Identify evidence-based pathways for beneficiary targeting, sequencing, graduation, financial inclusion, market integration, institutional coordination and adaptive program implementation.

Key Responsibilities of the Consultant (Methodology, Scope of Service, Tasks)

Methodology: The assessment shall apply an integrated women's economic empowerment and market-systems analytical framework that distinguishes: (i) access to, use of and control over resources and services; (ii) participation, influence, leadership and collective voice; (iii) entrepreneurial interest, readiness and commercial feasibility; and (iv) immediate constraints and their underlying household, institutional and market-system causes. The consultant will adopt a mixed-method, implementation-oriented approach that combines secondary data review, quantitative and qualitative field research, participatory consultations, and market systems analysis.

Scope of Service and Tasks: The assessment will focus on the gender-specific dimensions of economic participation, including women's agency, decision-making, mobility, control over assets and income, gender norms, safety and safeguarding, access to services and finance, and the barriers and enabling conditions that determine whether women can participate in and benefit from selected economic opportunities.

Key tasks include:

• Desk Review and Consolidation of Existing Evidence
• Primary Data Collection (household surveys, KIIs, FGDs, market observations)
• Analysis of Social Norms, Time-Poverty, and Protection Risks
• Financial Inclusion, VSLA, and Digital Ecosystems Analysis
• Enterprise Development, Cooperatives, and B2B Networks Analysis
• Vulnerable Group Profiling and Intersectionality Mapping
• Market Actors, Commercial Linkages and Partnership Models
• Progression Pathways, Targeting, and Graduation Frameworks
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Desired Candidate Profile