DFAT has a requirement for a contractor to provide some enabling services to manage and implement components of the Pacific Women Lead program. DFAT anticipates approaching the market through a one-step procurement process with the Request for Tender being advertised on AusTender in late September 2021.

Pacific Women Lead  (PWL) is the Australian Government's new regional gender equality program for the Pacific, to be delivered over 5 years (2021-2026) through an AUD $170 million investment.

The PWL program aims to ensure that Pacific women and girls, in all their diversity, are safe and equitably share in resources, opportunities and decision-making, with men and boys. PWL will focus on women's leadership and women's rights, including safety, health and economic empowerment and increasing the effectiveness of regional gender equality efforts. This new program builds on Australia's longstanding support for gender equality in the Pacific region through the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program. PWL will complement and is additional to existing (separately funded) bilateral gender equality partnerships.

The PWL Design Framework is consistent with the emphasis placed on advancing gender equality through Australia's  Foreign Policy White Paper (2017), DFAT's Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Strategy  (2016) and is explicitly aligned to the Partnerships for Recovery: Australia's COVID-19 Development Response  (2020), which recognises that women and children are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

PWL will be delivered with Pacific Partners including the Pacific Community (SPC), along with Pacific women led civil society organisations, including Women's Funds in the Pacific, and an Enabling Contractor. A new Governance Board will also be established for the program, led by eminent Pacific women, and comprised of at least two-thirds Pacific women, that will provide strategic oversight and take program decisions. The Enabling Contractor will be managed by and report to DFAT.