Original title "Zimbabwe's remarkable Progress Recorded in Gender Equity Programmes"

Posted on All Africa.com 10 March 2008, added on this website April 2008

Harare

"The Governement of Zimbabwe has made tremendous strides in implementing gender equity programmes that need to be complemented through a budget that pushes women empowerment", the Minister of Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development", Oppah Muchinguri said yesterday.

Although this year's international commemorations are being held under the theme; Financing for Gender Equality, Zimbabwe has adopted a national theme of "Gender budgeting for women empowerment."

Speaking at the launch of the International Women's Day, Muchinguri said this year's theme has come at a time when Government is implementing the gender budgeting programme launched in April last year.

Posted on Thaindian News on February 6th, 2008 - added on the website April 2008

New Delhi, 6 Feb 2008

The Ministry of Women and Child Development is organising a workshop to sensitise senior officials of various Central Ministries towards gender responsive budgeting. The officials of 35 Ministries will attend the residential workshop on 7th-8th February at Kuchesar, District Bulandshehar.

The objective of the workshop is to sensitise senior officials to the needs and realities of women at the grass roots. The Government has already set up gender budgeting cells in 35 Ministries to ensure a gender perspective at various stages like programme & policy formulation, review of extant policies and guidelines, reprioritisation and allocation of resources.

The two-day workshop will make assessment of needs of target groups and impact of the gender budgeting so far. Case studies and feedback on the initiative and future plan of action will be deliberated upon. The Ministry has taken a number of initiatives to use gender budgeting as a tool for empowerment of women.

The Ministry has adopted budgeting for gender equity as a mission statement. A strategic framework of activities to implement this mission has been framed and disseminated across all departments of the Central Government. The Ministry of finance has also mandated all Ministries to establish gender budgeting cells and has issued a gender charter for the same.

An innovative way to analyze federal spending recognizes women's needs as well as men's. An article by Martha Burk published by Ms Magazine (Weekly Feminist News). Added to this website April 2008

President Bush has unveiled his budget request for the next fiscal year, and it's hardly surprising: a dramatic increase in defense spending, an even larger deficit and proposed cuts in a wide range of domestic programs such as education, childcare, health research, Medicaid, Medicare and job training. Those programs being cut, not coincidentally, are those that disproportionately impact women.

Bush's budget proposal is consistent with what author Riane Eisler, in her book The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics ( Berrett-Koehler, 2007) , calls a “dominator” economic system. Such a system is characterized by a distribution of resources to those on top, heavy investment in armaments and a lack of investment in meeting human needs. The result is an economic double standard in which programs associated with “femininity” (such as caregiving) are devalued, while “masculine” priorities (such as war) are highly valued.

Read full article

http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2008/GenderBudgetsAnyone.asp

3 MARCH 2008

UNIFEM's Gender Budget Programme is pleased to announce the release of its first quarterly newsletter.

This Newsletter seeks to encourage knowledge sharing from Gender Budget Initiatives around the world, share news on progress made in incorporating a gender perspective into budgeting, and inform practitioners of new resources and publications on GRB.

GRB Newsletter Issue 1

The Herald (Harare)

Posted January 9, 2008

A parliamentary committee has urged the Government of Zimbabwe to increase its budgetary allocation towards gender mainstreaming programmes.

The measure would help to implement the Domestic Violence Act and to enable the development of other gender programmes. The Portfolio Committee on Youth, Gender and Women's Affairs, told Parliament that the 2008 budget allocated to the Ministry of Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development's gender programmes was too low. "It is very disturbing to note that the budget allocation for the Ministry of Women's Affairs does not have a substantial allocation for the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act that was passed by Parliament," read the report. The ministry received a total budget allocation of $800 billion against a request of $22, 8 trillion.

October 2007

The Moroccan Report to the CEDAW Committee is one of the first national reports to acknowledge that the fulfillment of women’s human rights requires the proper allocation of adequate resources.

This is an eloquent affirmation that compliance with CEDAW entails ensuring that budgets and budgeting processes are formulated with a gender perspective and are designed in a manner that addresses gender inequalities and discrimination against women. 

The reference to GRB can be found under paragraph 69 of the Moroccan report at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/40sess.htm (scroll down to Morocco).

The report which is available in Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Russian will be presented to the CEDAW Committee in January 2008.