GenderResponsive Budget:

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Gender-Responsive Budget Concepts, principles
and purposes ???
United Nations Development Programme Regional
Centre in Colombo Serving Asia and the Pacific
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National Budget
? Through the budget policies are
transformed from paper promises into
practice. ? The national budget demonstrates
the countrys priorities and values in
terms of the sectors, population groups,
and geographic locations.
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National Budget
? is a policy tool that demonstrates a
governments political commitment ? can make
evident that government spending is responsive
to the demands of poverty reduction
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National Budget
? can increase accountability and transparency
in public expenditure management ? may impact
differently on different individuals men,
women, boys, girls, older persons,
youth, persons with disabilities, etc.
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National Budget Why the need for integrating a
gender perspective?
? Budgets are not gender neutral, but are
perceived as neutral in their impacts on the
lives and empowerment of women and men and
different groups of women and men. ? Budgets
too often ignore womens social and economic
contribution.
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National Budget Why the need for integrating a
gender perspective?
? Women and men have different priorities, needs
and concerns, and contribute differently to the
society, due to their socially assigned gender
roles. ? The way a government raises and spends
money can have both positive and negative impact
on women and men, and their power relationship.
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National Budget Why the need for integrating a
gender perspective?
? Budgets are too often formulated, presented,
implemented and audited on an assumption that
their impact is felt by everyone in the same
way. ? The way a government raises and spends
money can have both positive and negative impact
on women and men, and their power relationship.
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Gender-Responsive Budget

• Also known as Gender Budget /Gender-
• Sensitive Budget /Gender Budget Work
• /Gender Budgeting /Gender-Aware
• Budget /Gender Budget Initiative
• /Gender Budget Analysis
• An effective gender mainstreaming tool
• Has been implemented in over 60
• countries since mid-1980s in one form or
• another

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Gender-Responsive Budget
?is an approach designed to mainstream the
gender dimension into all stages of the budget
cycle ?is the analysis of the impact of any
form of public expenditure or method of raising
revenues on women and girls as compared to men
and boys ?can take into account other categories
of inequality such as age, religious or ethnic
affiliation, or the place of residence
(urban/rural, different provinces), which can
then be incorporated into gender responsive
analysis
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Gender-Responsive Budget
?is not about whether an equal amount is spent
on women and men, but whether the spending is
adequate to womens and mens needs ?comprises
the drawing up of proposals designed to
reprioritise expenditures and revenues, taking
into account the different needs and priorities
of women and men ?results eventually in gender
responsive budgets but NOT in a separate budget
for women
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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action

• Women and Poverty
• Strategic objective A1
• Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic
  policies and development strategies that address
  the needs and efforts of women in poverty.

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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action

• Women and Poverty
• Action to be taken
• 58. By governments
• d) Restructure and target the allocation of
  public expenditures to promote womens economic
  opportunities and equal access to productive
  resources and to address the basic social,
  educational and health needs of women,
  particularly those living in poverty.

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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action
F. Women and the Economy Strategic objective
F1 Promote womens economic rights and
independence, including access to employment,
appropriate working conditions and control over
economic resources.
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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action
F. Women and the Economy Actions to be
taken 165. By governments i) Facilitate, at
appropriate levels, more open and transparent
budget processes.
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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action
Financial arrangements 345. Full and
effective implementation of the Platform for
Action, .., will require a political commitment
to make available human and financial resources
for the empowerment of women. This will require
the integration of a gender perspective in
budgetary decisions on policies and programmes,
as well as the adequate financing of specific
programmes for securing equality between women
and men.
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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing
Platform for Action
345. (continued) To implement the Platform for
Action, funding will need to be identified and
mobilized from all sources and across all
sectors. The reformulation of policies and
reallocation of resources may be needed within
and among programmes, but some policy changes may
not necessarily have financial implications.
Mobilization of additional resources, both public
and private, including resources from innovative
sources of funding, may also be necessary.
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Gender-Responsive Budget and the Beijing5 (23rd
GA Special Session)
73. Incorporate a gender perspective into the
design, development, adoption and execution of
all budgetary processes, as appropriate, in order
to promote equitable, effective and appropriate
resource allocation and establish adequate
budgetary allocations to support gender equality
and development programmes that enhance womens
empowerment and develop the necessary analytical
and methodological tools and mechanisms for
monitoring and evaluation.
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Gender-Responsive Budget Goals
? To help achieve gender equality and advance
womens human rights. ? To raise awareness of
the gender issues of budgets and
programmes. ? To promote transparency and
accountability of the gender impacts of
government budgets.
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Gender-Responsive Budget Goals
? To change and/or adjust programmes and
budgets to promote gender equality. ? To
reprioritize rather than an increase in overall
government expenditure or a change in the
sectoral allocations.
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Gender-Responsive Budget Dimensions to be
considered

• households and individuals
• care economy
• public employment
• users of publicly funded services
• transfers from the government to households
• time use patterns
• decision-making

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Gender-Responsive Budget Stakeholders to be
involved

• Ministry of Finance
• National Planning Commission
• Local government
• National machinery for womens empowerment and
  gender equality
• Researchers
• Statisticians

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Gender-Responsive Budget Stakeholders to be
involved

• Economists
• Civil society organisations
• Media
• Donors

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Gender-Responsive Budget What it can do

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Gender-Responsive Budget How it helps achieving
gender equality
Highlights implicit and explicit gender issues
and concerns Actively addresses gender gaps in
budget allocations Ensures that government
resources are allocated where they are most
needed for the benefit of all
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Gender-Responsive Budget How it helps achieving
gender equality
Answers to a question In what ways are the
polices and their associated resource allocations
likely to reduce or increase gender
inequalities? Assists in monitoring and
evaluating government expenditure against gender
development commitment
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Gender-Responsive Budget How it helps the
economic efficiency
Gender inequality is inefficient. GRB can
contribute to equity and economic efficiency by
articulating inputs, activities, outputs and
outcomes of government interventions and
essential feedback for making adjustments.
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Gender-Responsive Budget How it helps good
governance
GRB can help Governments better understand
the impacts of their activities on the welfare of
particular population groups, particularly the
disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.
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Gender-Responsive Budget Processes and
Initiatives

• GRB is a combination of multi-level, long-term,
  and context-specific interventions involving
  multiple activities.
• GRB should not be seen as a stand-alone
  activity. It should be conceptualised in the
  context of the larger environment in which GRB is
  situated and operated.

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Gender-Responsive Budget Processes and
Initiatives

• Advocacy/sensitization
• ? Gender equality assessment
• ? Gender Budget Analysis
• ? Networking/Consultation/Lobbying
• ? Capacity Building
• ? Target-Setting
• ? Gender-Responsive Budget Formats
• ? Monitoring Evaluation
• ? Feeding into New Budgets

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Gender-Responsive Budget Processes and
Initiatives

• Actors (e.g. Governments, civil society
  organisations, parliamentarians, researchers)
• Scope of the exercise (e.g. national-local,
  expenditure, all or selected portfolios)
• Activities (e.g. monitoring and evaluation,
  research, advocacy, training)
• Target groups (e.g. government officials,
  parliamentarians)
• Methods and tools applied

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Gender-Aware Medium-Term Economic
Policy/Expenditure Framework

• An appropriate approach when planning a budget
  for bringing about social and behavioural
  changes, such as gender equality
• A useful strategy for an output-based /
  performance-oriented public expenditure
  management
• Provides an opportunity to change underlying
  assumptions about the social and institutional
  setting for economic planning

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GRB - Essential ingredients

• Gender equality policy commitment
• High-level political leadership and
• commitment
• Country ownership
• Multi-ministerial commitment and
• cooperation
• Well-resourced and well-positioned
• womens national machinery
• Able and effective institutional
• mechanism for gender mainstreaming

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GRB - Essential ingredients

• Gender analysis capacity
• Gender action plan, targets and
• indicators
• Government-Civil society collaboration
• Sex- and age- disaggregated baseline
• data
• Long-term financial commitment
• Costing gender interventions

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Enabling environment for GRB Examples of
indicators

• a national machinery for womens
• empowerment and gender equality that is
• adequately resourced for its role
• an institutionalized routine exercise to
• monitor the budgets ability to meet the
• gender equality priorities of the national
• policies and plans of action
• engendered macroeconomic models

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Enabling environment for GRB Examples of
indicators

• an open communication channel for
• women and men to voice their
• perspectives on proposed budgets
• gender-responsive performance
• indicators in the policy and budget
• planning documents
• international human rights treaties ratified

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