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Mainstreaming gender perspectives in national budgets.
January 2001
The work undertaken to bring gender perspectives
to bear on national budgets since the mid 1980s has often been
rather loosely defined. Initially the initiatives were called
"women's budgets"; later they were called "gender
budgets" to reflect the ongoing shift from a focus on women
to the focus on gender and the relations between women and men.
Another commonly used term is "gender sensitive budgets".
More recently there is broader use of the term "mainstreaming
gender perspectives into national budgets", which is a
more appropriate term since the objective is not to produce
a separate gender budget but to incorporate relevant gender
perspectives into national budget processes.
The objectives of the initiatives have also
evolved over time. At the basis of all the initiatives is the
need to make national budget processes more accountable from
a gender perspective, to ensure that policy and budget decisions
take gender perspectives into account and that policies on gender
equality are matched with adequate resource allocations. A related
objective is to increase women's participation in economic processes.
Mandates
There is a very clear mandate on incorporating
gender perspectives into budget processes. For example, the
outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the
General Assembly to follow-up implementation of the Platform
for Action in June 2000 (A/S-23/10/Rev.1) clearly states:
"65. The realization and the achievement
of the goals of gender equality, development and peace need
to be supported by the allocation of necessary human, financial
and material resources for specific and targeted activities
to ensure gender equality at the local, national, regional and
international levels as well as by enhanced and increased international
cooperation. Explicit attention to these goals in the budgetary
processes at the national, regional and international levels
is essential."
"73 (b). 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 women's empowerment and
develop the necessary analytical and methodological tools and
mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation;"
Historical development of the initiatives
The attempts to link gender perspectives to
national budgets began in Australia in the mid 1980s. The initiative
was undertaken within government and was pushed by the national
machinery for gender equality. An important feature of the Australian
initiative was, however, the fact that all line ministries were
required annually to prepare a report on the implications of
their expenditure (and sometimes also revenue) for women and
men respectively. At the height of the process such reports
were prepared for the Federal Budget as well as for the budgets
of all states and territories. There was, however, little involvement
of civil society in this process and this is often given as
one of the main reasons for the decline in interest in the budget
initiative - i.e. the lack of demand from outside government.
Currently only one territory continues the work. The Australian
initiative, however, provided inspiration for many other countries.
In 1993 an NGO in Canada undertook a one-off initiative - the
development of a women's budget. This initiative was closely
linked to releasing resources tied up in the military for development
purposes. Canada has no formal budget initiative on gender equality
but has done some assessment of the gender perspectives of taxation,
as has the United Kingdom.
In the mid 1990s an initiative on budgets was
started in South Africa by NGOs, academics and parliamentarians.
A "women's budget" was prepared annually for four
years and a series of reports prepared in the fifth year. In
1997 some very innovative work was initiated in Tanzania by
an NGO - Tanzanian Gender Networking Project (TGNP). This NGO
was interested in working in the area of budgets only if the
Ministry of Finance was also actively involved. This is probably
the best example of real collaboration of government and civil
society on bringing attention to gender perspectives in the
national budget. Other countries around the world have been
involved in similar initiatives in budget processes at different
levels throughout the 1990s. It is estimated that efforts have
been made to influence budget processes from a gender perspective
in many different ways in a total of 42 countries globally.*
Evolution of approach
Over the 15 years these initiatives have been
undertaken, there has been a clear evolution of approach - from,
for example, a completely government-led approach in Australia
and an externally-initiated approach in South Africa, to a collaborative
(joint government and NGO) approach in Tanzania. Initially the
focus on analyzing how the budget would impact on both women
and men. A further development was the attempt to link the budget
to policy statements on gender equality - to point out glaring
gaps in allocation of resources to match policy goals. The initial
focus in many initiatives was also on the budget at national
or state levels but increasing attention is being given to local-level
resource allocation processes. The early approaches focused
on analyzing the budget already formulated. In recent years
there has been a shift to trying to influence the actual formulation
of budgets. There has also been a move from an almost exclusive
focus on expenditures to including a focus on revenues, including
taxation.
An alternative approach to the institutionalization
of this work has been developed in the Philippines. Since 1996
every government-related agency is required to allocate at least
five percent of their budget for gender equality work. The risks
of specifying such a small proportion of the budget have, however,
been raised as this could reinforce the marginalization of women
in relation to access to resources. Specific support is provided
to agencies by the national machinery for gender equality to
facilitate implementation of the five percent goal. In other
countries, for example in USA, there has been a strong focus
on training individuals and groups in civil society, including
women's groups and networks, on analysis of budgets and lobbying
techniques to influence the formulation of budgets at different
levels.
What has become very clear is the need for broad
involvement of many actors - government, NGOs, civil society
groups, academics, parliamentarians, etc. The need for the Ministry
of Finance and other such bodies to be actively involved has
also been well established. Since an important basis for the
work is a sound knowledge of the gender issues in relation to
different sectors, the involvement of women's groups and networks
and academics is essential. A number of different activities
are involved in the process of applying gender perspectives
to national budgets, including research, development of analytical
frameworks, development of guidelines and other tools and development
and provision of training programmes.
Support for these initiatives
Most of the early work was funded by bilateral
development cooperation agencies or other foundations such as
Ford Foundation. The Commonwealth became involved in supporting
this work in the mid-1990s and has initiated similar initiatives
in a number of Commonwealth countries, such as Barbados, Fiji,
St Kitts and Nevis, Sri Lanka and South Africa. UNDP and UNIFEM
began supporting this work in the mid-1990s. A conference, organized
by the Government of Belgium, Nordic Council of Ministers, Commonwealth
Secretariat, IDRC and UNIFEM, in Brussels in 2001, called for
a global effort to bring greater attention to gender perspectives
in national budgets.
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* These include Australia, Austria, Bangladesh,
Barbados, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Fiji,
France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon,
Malawi, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Norway, Peru,
Philippines, Russia, Rwanda, St Kitts and Nevis, Scotland, South
Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda,
United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
There may be more work carried out in other countries- small
initiatives at local level, for example - which is not documented. |
