Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) as a Policy Tool for Women

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Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB)as a Policy
Tool for Womens Advancement

• Esther Eghobamien
• Head of Gender Section Interim Director
• Social Transformation Programmes Division

Commonwealth Secretariat
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Overview

• Who we are (Commonwealth, STPD Gender Section)
• Background to GRB work and lessons learned
• Evolving to Gender Responsive Investments (GRI)
  work
• Key Lessons and Findings
• Conclusion

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Social Transformation Programmes Division

• Contributes to the Secretariats agenda on Human
  Development by working with governments and key
  stakeholders to address issues and challenges in
  Education, Health and Gender.
• Global Policy Framework
• global commitments in MDGs, BPfA, PoA, UNSCR
  1325, CEDAW
• Approach
• Advocacy Knowledge creation and Policy dialogue
• Brokering Technical Assistance, Capacity
  Building Partnerships

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Work Programme Four Critical CW PoA Action Areas
Mandates

• The Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender
  Equality 20052015 (PoA) provides an overarching
  mandate for gender equality. The Secretariats
  Gender Section coordinates the four PoA critical
  areas of concern
• Gender, Democracy Peace and Conflict
• Gender, human rights and law
• Gender, poverty eradication and economic
  empowerment
• Gender and HIV/AIDS
• Commonwealth Mandates
• CHOGM
• Ministerial

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Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB)

• Definition
• GRB is a budgeting process/tool that incorporates
  a gender equality perspective into the budgeting
  process and policies that underpin the budgetary
  processes towards promoting equality between
  women and men.

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Background to GRB work

• GRB pioneered in the late 1990s through strategic
  engagements with Commonwealth Finance Ministers.
• By 2005 biannual reporting to Finance Ministers
  on progress in implementing GRB among members was
  instituted.
• GRB reviewed in 2009
• revealed that a third of Commonwealth member
  countries had adapted GRB, including South
  Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and the United
  Kingdom, to mention a few.
• Modality
• Knowledge Creation
• Tools and resources
• Capacity strengthening
• Cabinet level training

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Key Lessons over 10-year GRB Implementation

• The tendency for most GRB work to be women
  focused and not utilise a system-wide approach
  for integrating gender with budget analysis
• Efforts often overlooked areas where mens needs
  define the norm
• A clear absence of accountability to women at all
  levels hinders GRB
• Statutory accountability mechanisms (parliaments,
  government machineries, womens NGOs) fail to
  make the necessary linkages between womens
  empowerment and poverty eradication

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Key Lessons Cont.

• Promoting womens leadership is pivotal to
  achieving development goals and targets
• The need to rethink ethics, values and priorities
  that shape and drive financial systems and
  markets
• The participation of women with capacity in
  budget matters has been pivotal, particularly in
  South Africa, Uganda and Australia
• A key role is played in GRB implementation by
  women parliamentarians in Uganda and South
  Africa
• Two thirds of countries that have initiated GRBs
  are still at the initial stage, i.e. environment
  building

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Key Lessons cont.

• The regions in which the greatest progress has
  been made are
• South Asia and
• Southern/Eastern Africa
• where the process of mainstreaming gender budgets
  within concerned ministries has been initiated.
• GRB require systematic support and follow up for
  this to become institutionalised.
• The processes in these regions have been quite
  different however, to a large extent the
  initiatives in South Asia have been led from
  within the government, whereas those in Africa,
  for example Tanzania, were initially led by CSOs
  and then taken over by government

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Key Lessons cont.

• Countries have chosen between looking at the
  budget as a whole and focusing on specific
  sectors. When the latter has been the case, the
  sectors that have figured prominently have been
  education, health and social security
• Focus primarily on the expenditure side of the
  budget, with work on the revenue side focusing on
  taxes (both direct and indirect) and tariffs in a
  comparatively preliminary phase
• Some countries have initiated activity at
  sub-national level. There have been regional
  initiatives in Australia, South Africa, India and
  Sri Lanka and
• Within the Commonwealth there are about 20
  countries for which we have not received any
  evidence of GRB activities.

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Gender Responsive Investments

• Women account for between 25-40 of SMEs
  Worldwide with earning power estimated to reach
  18 trillion by 2014... yet they are unbanked and
  receive low proportion of credit.

• Evolved out of pioneering GRB work
• Study on GRB findings showed weak institutional
  structures and mechanisms
• Public budget reforms alone inadequate to archive
  gender parity
• 9WAMM Mandated Secretariat to
• Research and source investors committed to paying
  for the required change
• Configure the implications of financing gender
  focussed change and innovation
• Enlarged focus to private-sector investment

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GRI Key Issues Research Questions

• Issues
• Large percentage of women owned and operated SMEs
  receive a small fraction of total capital
  available
• Financing gap is exacerbated by relative lack of
  skills, scarce business linkages and weak
  technical capabilities
• How to
• Deal with heightened barriers
• Better address asset distribution
• Innovate and change conventional lending
  practices
• Address the barriers of small and medium business
  in formation and achieving success
• Facilitate access to capital and mobilization of
  start up resources

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GRI Research Recommendations

• Allocate resources towards the development of a
  Commonwealth-wide data gathering initiative
  focusing on Women SMEs
• Address the adverse risk perception of local
  banks and provide technical assistance designed
  to reduce failure rates and increase
  profitability.
• Innovation in GRI is needed and conventional
  lending practices must be revisited and revised (
  GRI Handbook).
• Members and the Secretariats external partners
  have a key role to play to increase resource pool
  and ensure effective use of risk capital for SMEs
  for women entrepreneurs.
• Need to forge greater linkages between financial
  services and business development services (BDS)
  that target women entrepreneurs.

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Recommendations

• Raise awareness on the need to grow micro
  businesses into SMEs (Savings and Credit
  Organisations (SACOS) Global Knowledge Sharing
  Event - India)
• Improve Data Statistics on Womens Enterprise
• Members to develop a national strategy for
  womens enterprise development (Commonwealth
  Business Council partnership)

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The Way Forward A Roadmap for Fostering
GRIObjective An Enabled GRI SME Environment
Holistic Technical Assistance
Gender Awareness Training
Conducive Macro Environment
Banks Funders Incentivised
Gender Responsive SME Investment
Private Sector Support
Coherent National Policies
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Priority Action areas

• Develop tools and resources to enable gender
  responsive financial policies and services.
• Include comprehensive technical assistance as an
  integral part of any financing model.
• Deepen research on GRI
• Develop and Disseminate a Code of Good
  Practices With Respect to GRI

The Proposed Commonwealth GRI Good Practice
Award

• Tool for inspiring financial institutions to
  improve service delivery
• Award financial institutions and Ministries or
  government agencies

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Conclusion

• An established need for GRI to address Gender
  gaps in area of finance.
• Publication and tools to advance GRI underway.
• GRI Handbook
• Feedback and comments requested from partners.
• Stakeholders key to publicising the Commonwealth
  GRI practice award.
• Open to partnership and collaboration

• Parting Question
• What role can we play to advance GRI and enable
  Women be better Agents of Change?

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Thank you