Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls.
We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it’s girls who are most affected.
Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.
We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood. And we enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.
We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 80 years, and are now active in more than 70 countries.
The Opportunity
Plan International has put gender equality and inclusion at the heart of our organizational purpose. We believe that adopting a gender transformative approach ensures that our work results in positive changes and sustainable outcomes for girls and young women, and for society more broadly.
Our commitment to gender transformative change goes beyond addressing “symptoms” to explicitly tackle the root causes of gender inequality and exclusion, particularly unequal power relations, discriminatory social norms and systems, structures, policies and practices.
The Head of Gender Equality and Inclusion provides global strategic leadership to Plan International’s work on gender equality, inclusion and girls’ rights across all areas of our workplaces and programming.
The position ensures that Plan International’s programme and influencing work around the world effectively integrates gender equality and inclusion as a core part of our strategy.
Likewise, the post also ensures that gender equality, inclusion, and girls’ rights are effectively integrated across Plan International’s internal organisational structure and culture.
Key Deliverables
- Leading Plan International’s global community of practice on gender equality, intersectionality, and feminist leadership to provide bold, innovative and inspirational thought leadership on gender equality, intersectionality, girls’ rights and feminist principles, while influencing internal policies, processes, structures, and people to embrace Plan International’s gender transformative agenda.
- Building Plan International’s global reputation as a thought and practice leader on gender equality, inclusion, and girls’ rights in different contexts and under a changing global environment due to COVID-19 you will role model and embrace feminist approaches to leadership and organisational culture.
- Working closely with Plan International offices and departments to provide global strategic and passionate leadership for integrating the cross-cutting work of gender equality and inclusion across all of Plan International’s programmatic and influencing work, and across our offices and staff.
- Contributing to global leadership on Plan International’s wider priorities, processes & systems to support high quality work, and to ensure a meaningful and relevant focus on gender equality and inclusion you will ensure gender equality and inclusion are recognised by Plan International staff as mutually re-enforcing and interconnected across core areas of Plan International’s work.
- Working with Plan International’s programme leadership and global technical advisors’ team, to provide global leadership on the integration of gender equality and inclusion across Plan International ’s programme and influencing work you will also work with Plan International’s executive team and HROD department to provide leadership on mainstreaming gender equality and inclusion across Plan International’s internal organisational processes and workplaces.
- Collaborating with Programme Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (PMERL) Girls and Youth Power and Action (GYPA) and Strategy & Collaboration teams, and others to drive development of evidence-based, innovative, scalable and gender-transformative programme models and flagship programmes in the context of COVD-19.
- Leading a small, high performing team of global technical staff, located in different parts of the world, and coordinating closely with the regional gender and inclusion specialists and core members of the Global Gender and Inclusion Group (GIG) is a key part of this role. You will also contribute to the overall leadership of the Gender Transformative Policy and Practice team, driving delivery of the value proposition and continuous improvements in people management and ways of working.
About You
- You bring deep knowledge of key concepts of gender equality and inclusion, global girls’ and women’s rights and feminist movements and experience of leading gender equality, inclusion, and/or girls’ rights initiatives in complex international organizations.
- You will have prior experience of implementing gender, age, and inclusion and policy, power and stakeholder analysis in a wide range of complex contexts.
- The ability to identify risks, barriers, and enablers for the participation of children, adolescents, and girls with disabilities as well as other excluded and vulnerable groups is imperative as is the knowledge of how such analysis can be used to inform holistic, gender transformative and inclusive programmes and for influencing legal frameworks and public policies.
- Bringing knowledge and applied experience of participatory approaches, methodologies, and tools for use in campaigning and activism when working with girl-led groups in a variety of contexts you will have an excellent understanding of relevant policy making processes, influencers, and institutions including insights into institutional politics.
- With a proven track record of senior leadership and achievement amidst a fast-paced international development environment you are adept at navigating a complex organisational structure to get things done.
- You will have supported organisational change to ensure a work environment that promotes diversity and inclusion, challenging discrimination, sexual harassment and gender-based violence. You will identify the gender equality/inclusion/girls’ rights capacity needs of staff and put in place strategies to address them.
- A compelling influencer and communicator, externally you will connect with and influence national and/or global discussions on gender equality and inclusion and build effective networks, alliances and partnerships with women’s movements, youth movements, indigenous’ movements and LGBTIQ networks.
- You will build and create common agendas with governments, the private sector and civil society to integrate children, adolescents and youth from diverse groups in society by informing gender responsive and inclusive legal frameworks, public policy, budgets and institutional services.
Please follow this link for a full role profile and person specification;
Location: Flexible where Plan International has a legal entity and the applicant has the pre-existing right to work and live. Those locations closest to Plan International’s point of impact are preferred.
Type of Role: Permanent where possible. The employment practices in some locations may dictate a fixed term contract.
Reports to: Director of Gender Transformative Policy and Practice
Salary: We will be happy to disclose the salary and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process, however, please kindly note that this will vary according to the location of the appointed candidate and therefore it is not possible to include full details here. As an indication if this role was based in the Global Hub office in the UK the salary would be circa £55-65000 per annum
Closing Date: Monday 20th September (12pm UK)
Applicable locations may include: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.
We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.
We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.
Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.
A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International’s Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme.
In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.