Gender & Jobtech Specialist

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About Mercy Corps
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Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

The Program / Department / Team

Mercy Corps has worked with jobtech for over a decade - investing, supporting product innovation, and conducting research on the opportunities for the sector. In late 2021, Mercy Corps launched the Jobtech Alliance, an ecosystem-building initiative around inclusive jobtech in Africa. We’ve just secured our first dedicated funding for the Jobtech Alliance, and are recruiting a team to expand the Jobtech Alliance as the innovation and learning hub for inclusive jobtech in Africa.

The Position

The Jobtech Gender Expert works with jobtech platforms to ensure that their services create and improve livelihoods for young women. S/he work across the portfolio of partnerships with startups to assess how platforms can improve their services for young women, and provides hands-on venture-building support to startups with high potential to improve their gender inclusiveness or to create large numbers of jobs for young women. In summary, the expert will:

• Understand and tackle barriers young women face in jobtech platforms.
• Implement and participate in the design of inclusive strategies and approaches for Jobtech Alliance.
• Work with individual platforms as technical assistance, on secondment, and/or embedded into the teams to deliver sprints which improve job accessibility for young and marginalized women, as well as supporting in the development of strategy, decision-making, operations and value chains with a gender inclusive lens.

Essential Responsibilities

GENDER-INCLUSION STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

• Lead the design, implementation and evaluation of the Jobtech Alliance’s strategies for reaching gender goals within businesses and job platforms.
• Lead other research activities,  including gender diagnostics, customer satisfaction studies, and contribute to the design of research framework and tools with a gender and inclusion lens.
• Conduct data collection, analysis and report writing of the monitoring and research efforts.

GENDER-FOCUSED VENTURE-BUILDING SUPPORT

• Provide hands-on support to jobtech platforms across Africa in individual sprints which improve gender inclusion and enhance outcomes for young women. This will include analysis of product design, marketing, or operations from a gender lens, and advise solutions toward improved inclusion of young women and other marginalized youth where needed.
• Provide capacity-building support and tools to jobtech platforms, where suitable, to improve their capacity to take a gender inclusive approach in their work.

RESEARCH & MARKET INSIGHTS

• Contribute to the overall development of the research agenda for the Jobtech Alliance and advise on learning questions, indicators, and tools to assess gender inclusion.
• Support the production of communication collateral to share learnings internally and externally, including blogs and similar products.

INTERNAL PROJECT COORDINATION

• Participate in internal project coordination and relationship building internally and externally for project planning and systems management, presentations of project results as needed and at times attend local events, meetings and networking activities.

Supervisory Responsibility

None

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Program Director / Jobtech Alliance
Works Directly With: Startups, External partners, Venture Building Managers, Finance team

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• 5-10 years of professional experience in related field, including at least 2 years working in or with startups (in leadership, product, operations, or marketing)
• Expertise in design thinking and/or human-centered design, including conducting qualitative assessments and user experience mix-method surveys. Experience in UI/UX a plus.
• Demonstrated experience in gender, women’s economic empowerment, gendered entrepreneurial ecosystems, research on gender issues, or equivalent
• Experience working with products that specifically target women a plus.
• Excellent communications skills including effective writing skills, people skills and relationship management.
• Higher level education in related field.

Success Factors

You are a doer who has significant experience working with startups, and understand how to design products and services for users, possibly with a focus on women’s economic empowerment or entrepreneurship. As an innovative, dynamic platform, we are looking for an individual who can grow and change along with us; while applying their talent and experience in their work.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

This role is for people with the right to work in Nigeria. Travel will be required 25% of the time, and could involve stretches of at least two weeks.

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives. 
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact. 
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.