UN Women: Economist and/or Women’s Economic Empowerment Research Expert – for Systematic Literature Review on Women’s Entrepreneurship, Home-based, Retainer International Consultant

UN Women – the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – exists to advance women’s rights, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. 

As the lead United Nations entity on gender equality and secretariat of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, we shift laws, institutions, social norms and services to close the gender gap and build an equal world for all women and girls. Our partnerships with governments, women’s movements and the private sector, coupled with our coordination of the broader United Nations, deliver lasting changes. We make strides in four areas: leadership, economic empowerment, freedom from violence, and peace, security and humanitarian action.

UN Women keeps the rights of women and girls at the centre of global progress – always, everywhere. Because gender equality is not just what we do. It is who we are.

Women’s Economic Empowerment is a key focus area for UN Women as expressed in its Strategic Plan. Empowering women to participate fully in economic life is essential to building strong economies, establishing just societies, and achieving the 2030 Agenda including Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.

In this context, UN Women places particular emphasis on gender-responsive SME development, inclusive market systems, and strengthening the enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs and inclusive enterprises to access finance, markets, infrastructure and policy support. Women entrepreneurs, especially ‘Impact Entrepreneurs’ play a crucial role in driving innovation to address persisting challenges to advance sustainable development. However, women entrepreneurs are often seen as beneficiaries rather than driver of such innovation. 

Women-owned businesses are widely recognized as drivers of inclusive economic growth, yet significant gaps persist in understanding the “Missing Middle” segment, that is firms that have outgrown microenterprise support but remain underserved by formal finance, markets, and business ecosystems. Existing literature highlights intersecting structural and gender-based constraints, including limited access to finance, markets, networks, and persistent gender gaps in unpaid care workloads. However, evidence remains fragmented, particularly regarding the distinctiveness of the Missing Middle segment, the interaction between structural and gender constraints, the pathways linking enterprise support to growth, jobs, and women’s economic empowerment. 

Furthermore, despite growing recognition of the economic multiplier effects of investing in care and climate-responsive sectors, there remains limited consolidated and policy-relevant evidence that systematically links gender-diverse entrepreneurship in the care and green economies with women’s labour force participation, job quality, enterprise growth, and ecosystem-level transformation. 

Women entrepreneurs can often be segmented into ‘Necessity entrepreneurs’ vs ‘Opportunity Entrepreneurs’. This is irrespective of the sector they are operating in. In addition to care and green sectors, the tourism sector contributes a high share to the GDP of economies in Asia and the Pacific. This sector is highly feminized, yet women entrepreneurs are often segregated at the nano, micro segment and remain ‘necessity entrepreneurs’.

There is growing recognition of the role of inclusive and impact businesses, especially those in the ‘Missing Middle in advancing women’s economic empowerment, there remains limited consolidated evidence on the specific pathways through which such enterprises contribute to increasing women’s labour force participation, improving job quality, and catalyzing systemic shifts in the care and green economies as well as regional economic priority sectors , such as Tourism. In particular, there is a need to better understand how inclusive entrepreneurship intersects with care systems transformation, climate resilience, decent work creation, and inclusive SME ecosystem development across emerging markets. Strengthening the enabling ecosystem -including access to finance, market linkages, policy coherence, standards, infrastructure and investment readiness- is therefore critical to unlocking the growth potential of gender-diverse enterprises in these sectors.

While practice-based evidence and programme learnings are emerging, there remains limited consolidated and policy-relevant analysis that systematically links gender-diverse entrepreneurship in the care and green economies with women’s labour force participation, job quality outcomes, enterprise growth trajectories, and ecosystem-level enablers and constraints. Existing research often examines care systems, climate entrepreneurship, or women’s MSME participation in isolation. There is a critical gap in integrated, cross-sectoral analysis that articulates the economic pathways through which gender-diverse impact businesses contribute to care systems transformation, climate resilience, decent work creation, and inclusive SME ecosystem development. Addressing this gap is essential to inform evidence-based advocacy, ecosystem design, and investment strategies under the programme.

One part of the solution is to enable inclusive businesses, particularly women-led enterprises, to build more resilient, scalable and gender-responsive business models that create quality job opportunities for women while contributing to the reduction of women’s time poverty and addressing climate-change–induced challenges. This requires strengthening the economic viability, productivity, market integration and growth pathways of such enterprises within the broader SME ecosystem. Towards this, UN Women and Visa Foundation have partnered for the UN Women Care and Climate Entrepreneurship Accelerator. which empowers women-owned and diverse small businesses that focus on the care economy, the green economy and the intersection of both economies. Support is especially relevant for ‘missing-middle’ businesses – given that supporting missing middle enterprises could be an apt first step in leveraging the cascading effects of building resilient enterprises in ASEAN.

Beyond direct enterprise support, the Accelerator includes a dedicated knowledge and thought leadership component to generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence on how gender-diverse entrepreneurship can serve as a driver of women’s labour force participation, decent work creation, and inclusive economic transformation. This includes examining enterprise growth trajectories, productivity dynamics, and linkages to markets, value chains and trade where relevant. 

The Accelerator aims to catalyze more than 50,000 new or improved livelihoods in the care and green economies, with a strong focus on expanding quality employment opportunities for women. The Accelerator will prioritize solutions that expand access to affordable care and address women’s unequal care responsibilities by creating new and better jobs and opportunities for women.

Specifically, the programme will support entrepreneurial solutions that:

1. provide accessible, affordable, quality care for communities, that in turn create new or improve existing work opportunities in the care sector in Asia-Pacific and Latin America 
2. address different challenges linked to the impacts of climate change in Asia-Pacific
3. strengthen ecosystem linkages — including access to finance, markets, technology, and policy support - to enable gender-diverse enterprises to scale sustainably and generate broader economic impact.

The programme combines enterprise acceleration with ecosystem engagement, policy advocacy and investor dialogue to ensure that supported enterprises can translate capacity-building into measurable business growth, job creation and community-level impact.

Knowledge generation is a core pillar of the Accelerator. Toward this, UN Women will strengthen the availability of knowledge, evidence and data to inform gender-responsive SME development and increased investments in the care and green economies - through the development of thought leadership research to examine the economic pathways through which gender-diverse entrepreneurship contributes to increased women’s labour force participation, improved job quality, and systemic transformation within care and green economy ecosystems - including through productivity gains and time-savings enabled by care solutions. 

The first step is to undertake a systematic literature review on the topic of women’s entrepreneurship. To ensure analytical rigor and global policy relevance, this work will be grounded in a structured and systematic review of academic literature, policy research, and grey literature across the care and green economies. The review will serve as the analytical foundation of the publication and will consolidate existing evidence, identify conceptual and empirical gaps, and articulate a coherent economic framework linking inclusive impact businesses to labour market outcomes and ecosystem-level enablers. Where relevant, the framework may also draw linkages to women’s participation in markets, trade and value chains as part of enterprise growth pathways within the care and green economies.

The systematic review is expected to also contribute to the WE RISE Together (WRT) programme, a regional initiative implemented by UN Women, with the support from the Australian Government through the Mekong-Australia Partnership, to advance women’s economic empowerment through gender-responsive procurement in the Mekong subregion, including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam. The programme seeks to expand equitable market opportunities for women-owned businesses (WOBs) and gender-responsive enterprises (GREs) by strengthening public and private procurement systems, promoting supplier diversity, and addressing structural barriers that limit women’s participation in markets and value chains. It is notable that in addition to the challenges mentioned earlier, missing-middle entrepreneurs may also not be large enough to be export-ready, and may be unable to fulfil MOQs that trade readiness demands.

UN Women is commissioning an International Consultant to conduct a systematic literature review and analytical synthesis, grounded in economic analysis and business economics perspectives, that will (i) consolidate existing academic and policy evidence; (ii) identify key conceptual frameworks and knowledge gaps; and (iii) delineate how ecosystem actors (governments, investors, entrepreneurship support organizations, market players) can work together to enable decent work creation and increased women’s labour force participation—within care and climate and also in the wider SME space through time-savings enabled by care solutions.

The consultant will also articulate actionable implications for policymakers, investors and ecosystem actors, positioning the research as a flagship thought leadership product under the Accelerator.

The UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP), through the UN Women Care and Climate Entrepreneurship Accelerator supported by the Visa Foundation, seeks to strengthen the evidence base on how women’s entrepreneurship, especially in the care and green economies and tourism, contribute to inclusive economic growth, women’s economic empowerment and sustainable development.  Under Output 1.1 and Activity 1.1.2 of the programme, UN Women will develop a knowledge product to articulate the pathways through which Women-own and/or women-led businesses contribute to ecosystem-level transformation, including for women-benefitting enterprises. To generate evidence relevant to the WE RISE Together programme, the knowledge product is also expected to examine key structural and ecosystem-level constraints affecting women’s enterprises’ participation in markets, including barriers related to market access, supply chains, procurement systems, finance, business networks, and digitalization. Particular attention will be given to how these constraints intersect with gender-specific challenges shaping the growth, resilience, and competitiveness of women-owned and/or women-led businesses across sectors and value chains.

For this purpose, UN Women seeks the services of an economist/ researcher to conduct a systematic literature review that synthesizes global evidence on:

1. The characteristics and typologies of women-owned/women-led SMEs, with emphasis on the Missing Middle (high-growth businesses)
2. Structural and gender-specific constraints affecting their growth; 
3. The relationship between enterprise support and firm-level and broader socio-economic and sustainability outcomes; (such as but not limited to creation of decent livelihoods for women, time savings from reduction/redistribution of unpaid care work, climate-related outcomes such as emissions reduced / carbon captured etc.) 
4. Sector specificities for WOBs / missing middle entrepreneurs in impact sectors, such as the Care Economy, Green Economy and Tourism;
5. Evidence gaps and implications for research and policy.

The review should address:

1. Definition and Typology 
   • How are women-owned SMEs and “Missing Middle” firms defined in the literature? 
   • What typologies of women-owned enterprises exist? 
   • What other typologies should be considered? (i.e. women-benefitting businesses?)
   • What role does Impact Entrepreneurship play within this? 
2. Constraints 
   • What structural constraints (finance, markets (procurement and trade included), networks, regulation) are most binding? 
   • What gender-specific constraints (norms, care, time poverty) affect firm performance? 
   • How do these constraints interact? 
3. Support 
   • What types of support (finance, capacity building, networks, policy) are documented? What are the most effective? 
   • What is the role of digitalization? 
   • What social, sustainability and economic outcomes are linked to support? 
4. Impacts and Outcomes of ‘Missing Middle Enterprises’
   • What social and sustainability outcomes are Missing Middle Entrepreneurs are contributing to? (i.e. resilience, employment and livelihoods creating, impacts to advance sustainable development (SDGs))? 
   • What gendered difference are visible between female and male enterprises in advancing economic, social and sustainability impact outcomes? 
5. Sectoral Insights 
   • What does the literature say about women-owned firms in: 
     • Care economy 
     • Green/climate sectors 
     • Tourism.
   • What specific outcomes are WOBs in these sectors are driving? 
6. Evidence Gaps 
   • Where is evidence weak or missing, particularly regarding Women-owned enterprises operating in the Missing Middle? 

The International Consultant (Economist) will support UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) in developing the analytical foundation for a knowledge product. The assignment entails conducting a systematic literature review on how women-owned and women-led businesses operating in select sectors contribute to increasing women’s labour force participation, improving job quality, and advancing inclusive and climate-resilient economic transformation and provide a robust analytical synthesis of the results.

The Consultant is expected to bring strong expertise in business economics and gender analysis with demonstrated ability to integrate enterprise-level analysis with labour market and ecosystem-level outcomes and will undertake the following:

• Develop and/or refine the analytical framework grounded in business economics, gender, business and trade to examine enterprise-level and system-level effects and ecosystem-level enablers and constraints;
• Refine the core research questions in consultation with UN Women;
• Develop search strategies, keywords, databases and screening parameters to generate evidence aligned with core research questions;
• Define inclusion and exclusion criteria for the literature review, including thematic scope (care economy, green economy, intersectional models), and types of evidence (peer reviewed journal articles, grey literature)
• Provide a detailed outline and analytical structure for the final report, ensuring it is suitable to serve as the foundational chapter of a broader publication under the Accelerator.

• Systematically extract and synthesize evidence from the selected literature, focusing on key dimensions relevant to the study. This includes: 
  1. definitions and typologies of women-owned enterprises, with particular attention to the Missing Middle segment; 
  2. identification and categorization of constraints, distinguishing between structural (e.g., finance, markets, networks) and gender-specific barriers (e.g., norms, care responsibilities, time poverty); 
  3. types of support and interventions, including digitalization, financial, capacity-building, and market-access mechanisms; and 
  4. reported firm-level and socio-economic outcomes, such as growth, resilience, employment, and empowerment. 
• Synthesize thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns, comparative analysis to assess differences across contexts and sectors, and conceptual mapping to structure relationships between constraints, interventions, and outcomes. This analysis will directly inform the finalization of the knowledge product’s analytical framework. 
• Generate a set of structured analytical outputs (thematic synthesis) to inform both the conceptual framing and empirical analysis of the study, as follows:

1. develop a constraint framework that clearly categorizes and distinguishes between structural constraints (e.g., access to finance, markets, and networks) and gender-specific constraints (e.g., social norms, unpaid care responsibilities, and time poverty). The typology and constraint framework will be designed to inform and be tested through subsequent primary data collection and cohort-based analysis under later phases of the study.
2. develop a preliminary, operational typology of women-owned firms, including distinctions relevant to the Missing Middle segment, highlighting differences in growth potential, constraint profiles, and support needs. The review will also identify key variables and indicators to inform the design of firm-level data collection tools in subsequent research phases.
3. generate inputs for the study’s conceptual framework, articulating evidence-based pathways that link support interventions to firm-level outcomes, such as economic growth, women’s economic empowerment and sustainable development).

The systematic review is expected to apply PRISMA or equivalent systematic review protocol to document number of studies identified, screening process, and final sample.

• Translate technical and academic evidence into a structured, policy-relevant and analytically rigorous narrative aligned with the programme.
• Ensure that the analysis complements ongoing ecosystem engagement and innovative finance exploration under the programme.
• Incorporate feedback from UN Women through agreed review rounds and finalize a publication-ready analytical report.

Ecosystem and Policy Implications

The systematic review and thematic analysis are expected to summarize and delineate ways for ecosystem actors, such as governments, policymakers, investors, entrepreneurship support organizations and market players, to work together to create decent work and employment opportunities;

Where relevant, the consultant should consider linkages to women’s participation in trade, markets and value chains, particularly as they relate to enterprise growth pathways, including within the care and green economies; and articulate policy- and investment-relevant insights to inform programme advocacy, ecosystem engagement and future scaling.

In terms of the Retainer Contract, payments for this retainer consultancy will be based on the number of days worked. The service will be rendered on “on call” basis.  UN Women does not warrant that the maximum of contract amount will be purchased during the term of the Agreement. While on retainer, there is no guarantee of work, and selected consultants retain the right to decline assignments based on their availability and expertise. 

This is a home-based consultancy without official travel. If travel is needed, travel will be arranged by UN Women following the UN Women’s Travel Policy.

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework: 

• Strong knowledge of the care economy
• Strong understanding of women’s economic empowerment and UN Women’s approach
• Experience in writing analytical papers and reports

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Economics, Social Sciences, Gender/women's Studies, International Relations, Political/Development Studies, or other relevant discipline is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

• At least 5 years of relevant experience in conducting research on entrepreneurship, private sector development, business economics is required.
• Proven experience in conducting systematic literature review
• Proven experience in conducting research on SMEs 
• Proven experience in conducting peer reviewed research 
• Proven experience in gender analysis
• Strong understanding of women’s economic empowerment or the care economy is desirable.
• Prior experience in the UN System is desirable.

• Fluency in English is required.

• Fill in online application in Quantum
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)
• A writing sample may be requested from the shortlisted candidates.

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

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