GRB as long term strategy: Building Capacity, Facing Challenges

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GRB as long term strategy Building Capacity,
Facing Challenges

• Seminar for Office of the Equal Opportunities
  Ombudsperson Centre for Equality Advancement,
  Lithuania
• September 4-5, 2008

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Bedding Policy

• Period required for declared policy to become
  practice then honed
• Gender Equality/Equality a lot done, more to do
• The importance of the articulation, declaration
  of policy
• The ensuing grind to bring it to implementation

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GBI toward GRB

• Raise awareness re GE(I)
• Develop and forward argument re gender economy
• Liberate/elevate equality issues
• Demonstrate the gap between policy and resource
  allocation
• Reveal the disconnect between policy-making and
  budget-making

4
GBI toward GRB

• Reveal the need for disaggregated data
• Push for stronger policy/legislation on data
• Develop gender/equality expertise within
  government machinery
• Open space for NGO/government co-operation
• Promote transparency heighten accountability

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Why enumerate

• Because we are a long way from the goal of GRB
  the restructuring of budgets to meet
  gender/equality objectives
• Because this is the reality of bedding policy,
  because these are the building blocks, because
  these are substantial outcomes along the way

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What do we need to do GRB/GBI

• Political Will
• Bureaucratic Will
• According to the experience gained by the
  Scandinavian countries, it is not possible
  without the active support of the Ministry
  responsible for Equality and it is also not
  possible unless two prerequisites are met a
  consensus at the highest level of the
  administration and, ideally, a political mandate
  from the Parliament.

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What do we need to do GRB/GBI

• Knowledge of budget-making process - Budget
  Literacy
• Knowledge of budget analysis work globally
• www.internationalbudget.org links
• To understand the processes related to
  budget-making
• To sharpen our powers of scrutiny
• To know that GRB is part of wider enterprise in
  the scrutiny and improvement of budget processes
• To increase confidence

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What do we need to do GRB/GBI

• Knowledge of local processes relating to budget
• Knowledge of political/bureaucratic levers and
  allies
• Awareness of relationship between economic
  policy-making and budget-making how tenuous, or
  otherwise
• GRB possible while advocating for reform of
  economic policy

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GRB A political enterprise

• Fundamentally, change in/reform of economic
  policy is political
• As such the work to bring this about is of a
  political nature
• GRB as with any other activity to promote the
  equality agenda is an aid to the political work
• GRB straddles the inside and the outside

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Data Difficulties

• Data disaggregated still vital
• Data use joining data to policy making cited
  in a UNECE report as being broadly recognised as
  an area of work
• Concern of statisticians re jeopardising
  collection because of refusal to response
• Some agencies outside the National Stats office
  do not see the need for S-D

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Data Difficulties

• Engendering data is more than collecting S-D data
  as with equality data
• Reluctance to use qualitative data to supplement
  to enrich stats
• Poverty measured using household income data and
  consumption data
• Few studies using these datasets to look at
  difference between men and women re poverty
  because of tax data??

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Data Difficulties

• Studies do show intra-household distribution and
  point to more positive benefits to children from
  womens expenditure
• Employment labour force stats inadequate to
  show nature and quality of employment where
  inequalities are likely to exist
• Need for stats re access, segregation, work
  conditions, type of contracts, wages, flexibility
  of working time etc

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Data Difficulties

• Lack of stats on women in enterprise
  highlighted by ILO conference of Labour
  Statisticians OECD workshop on improving stats
  on SMEs interesting
• Perhaps most important pressing issue is the link
  between statisticians and policy makers unable
  to communicate
• Are policy makers able/willing to tell
  statisticians what they want

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Data Difficulties

• Statisticians removed from world of policy making
  and not able to know what to look for that is
  relevant to policy makers
• Transforming stats on gender for policy
  formulation and monitoring a big challenge
  used more for advocacy

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What do we need to do GRB/GBI?

• Demystification of economics
• Economic literacy HOWEVER, we should not get
  bogged down in this
• BECAUSE
• GRB alliance of skills
• Economics is politics not science
• GRB is a political enterprise aimed at reforming
  policy making

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What do we need to do GRB/GBI

• Gender awareness - in EU poor progress after so
  many years we need to keep on this track
• Gender expertise mechanisms, systems to train
  staff in this area on on-going basis
• Also recognition of what we have in this realm in
  the first instance
• Re-valuing of gender expertise to level of
  economic expertise

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Challenges

• Newness of process of budgeting making in
  Northern Ireland reluctance to accommodate new
• Getting the right start identifying the
  opportunity
• Getting top-level buy-in
• Squaring GB with commitments to broader equality
  agenda

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Opportunities

• Newness of process in Northern Ireland openness
  to accommodate new viz Scotland
• Getting top-level buy-in
• The status of GRB in Europe globally
• Remit of ECNI your clout
• UK colleagues - WBGs