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Gender-responsive budgeting is a crucial tool for women’s empowerment. In Morocco, UNIFEM has worked with the government to create a more tailored approach in which budgeting can have a more effective and immediate impact. As this documentary illustrates, when the needs of women living in a particular geographical and cultural context are addressed, the entire community benefits. In the past four years, the Finance Ministry of Morocco has made substantial progress in developing both gender-responsive and results-oriented budgetary reform.| Report on the International Seminar on Gender and Budget Oaxaca, June 2003 |
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TITLE: Report on the International Seminar on Gender and Budget The following are notes from a meeting on gender budgeting which took place in Oaxaca on June 13, 2003. The meeting was organized by the Instituto de la Mujer Oaxaqueña (IMO) and UNIFEM. Presentations at the meeting highlighted gender budget experiences from different contexts, discussed ways to systematize proposals of impact measuring tools, and brought forth methodological advances in gender budget exercises.
Oaxaca, June 13, 2003.
The objective of this meeting organized by the Instituto de la Mujer Oaxaqueña (IMO), along with UNIFEM, and in the framework of the strategy launched by UNIFEM to promote public policies with a gender perspective in resource allotting, was to strengthen the debate around concepts, methods and tools for the formulation and analysis of national, state, sector and local budgets from a gender perspective.
The purposes were:
The presentations were made by:
Yassine Fall Rebeca Grynspan, Director, CEPAL Mexico Irma Reyes Terán, President, Instituto de la Mujer Oaxaqueña Esdras Eudaldo Cruz y Cruz, Director of Incomes, Ministry of Finance Manlio Fabio Barrera Dávila, Director of Outputs and Budget Control, Ministry of Finance Guillermo Menchu, Minister of Finance for the Government of Oaxaca Teresa Rodríguez, Regional Director, UNIFEM Luz Méndez, UNAMG, Guatemala Walda Barrios, FLACSO, Guatemala María Rosa Renzi, Economic Advisor, UNIFEM Nicaragua Patricia Espinoza, President, Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres Yassine Fall’s presentation dealt on budgets with a gender perspective. The issues dealt with were the analysis of what has been done, alliance creation, knowledge creation and diffusion, experiences had, and methodological advances. Evaluating the progress, YF mentioned that inequity has become evident due to analyses with gender perspective; people’s participation in the issue has increased, and civil society and governments have become more aware; capacities and abilities have been built and trainers, women’s organizations and governmental structures have sprung; the expert network has spread, and new knowledge has been built; managing and political dialog achieved some influence and the media was mobilized. On methodology, government measures on social expenditures, infrastructure, schools, health centers, sewage, drinking water, highways and general support for the population reductions were detected, and how this lack of services become a burden for the population, but especially for women, since they have to provide these community services on top of their household work. What is a public budget? It is composed of: Revenues Expenditures Taxes Debt payment Indirect revenues Government purchases Debt emission Infrastructure expenditures Export revenues Social services Loans What do budgets reflect?
Government preferences for different taxing methods they adopt, political capacity to shift tax burdens to certain groups to fight poverty, and their commitment to incorporate (or not) equity criteria and gender perspective.
State political interventions are divided into: diagnosis, policies and tools formulation, and monitoring. Gender perspective budgets, in the diagnosis level, would have to detect where is female poverty found as well as the existing disproportion between what women contribute to the budget and what they are returned in services. In the case of Africa, the challenges are to listen more to local groups and less to the International Monetary Fund. Everything was lopsided during the colonial period and right now women are participating in the political context to fight AIDS, poverty, class and race discrimination, and the need to have a political voice. Rebeca Grynspan
We need systems that would allow effect viewing in all of its spaces, including the exchange one.
How is visibility achieved? An adequate information system is needed, there has to be a social authority that can negotiate with the economic authority and this social authority has to understand economics. What happens when there is only one cabinet, ministers fight, and there is no integrated joint vision? Dialogue is essential between the executive, the legislative and the social sectors. It must be ex ante and ex post. Other elements to be analyzed are: how are expenditures made, if it is exercised in full or if supplies are given; there must be a social auditing, which is the way in which democracy is strengthened, since it shows if government promises are fulfilled and it recovers the democratic strengthening process. On the other hand, ethics should be closer to objectives than to final processes, but it is important that they be in both. We are headed toward a building where social participation and ethics are key issues. The first step is to decode, to be irreverent. Budgets have an enormous impact in efficiency, in the democratic mechanism, in women’s empowerment and in equity. There are several levels of gender budget analysis, for example: how much money reaches women, but we must be clear that that is not a gender-perspective budget. Are women’s institutions funded? Seeing where do we have gender inequity indicators within public services, such as the access to education, and why is this access unequal. Resource inequity is found not just in public services, but also in the working of the labor market; in Latin America seven out of every ten jobs are informal, unprotected, and this is a key element that is in the heart of inequity. Development’s trap is that fighting poverty is impossible without fighting inequity as well. Fighting poverty is good, but it is marginal. The point is that if inequity is not reduced, we will not grow. What is the priority agenda from gender perspective. For example, universal access to water is a priority, but not just for women, it is for all, but the greatest effect is on women, there is no possibility of productive projects if there is not enough available water to reduce women’s working hours. Nothing is possible without civil and public institutions, they must be invested upon, they must be built so that they can take measures and spend, so that not one peso is lost. Building a civil institution is a permanent work, since there are perverse incentives for the long term. Once political parties had this agenda but they have weakened and it was left in the hands of the civil society. How can we generate gender indicators and establish this perspective? Some ideas are to give women better access to land owning, but this is tied to a legal issue. In Costa Rica, for example, women work is their helping in the fields, but they are not the workers. Therefore, all the services provided by the state were the couple’s property, and this changed the conception: both partners work and they both own what is produced. Norma Reyes Terán Public budgets are core tools and in them gender issues are essential. The work of the Instituto de la Mujer Oaxaqueña has been to include the idea of gender in the government, through the following actions:
Other issues tackled were home violence, property issues, municipal development, and women’s political participation. Budgets must not be exclusive to women, and they should not be treated as vulnerable groups.
Budget design must promote egalitarian benefits. The strategy followed was to elaborate a specialization program on gender equity at all levels of public service. Guided by the principle that thinking is thinking to act, and that its goal is problem solution, “andragogy” methods were used, and knowledge was led to annual operative programs format (AOPs). Women are viewed and in every action data on sex, age, population type and resource amount allotted are captured. Esdras Eudaldo Cruz y Cruz He presented the experiences withing the Government of Oaxaca on the application of knowledge acquired at the seminary on gender in fiscal indicator building within the government. According to the 2000 Population and Housing General Census, the specific rate of women’s participation at the national level is 29.9%, and in Oaxaca it is 25.2%. In women-led homes, their national participation level is 20.6% and in Oaxaca it is 22.3%. In this context, he commented which are the State attributes in activity regulation, public services creation, and economic life intervention. The government’s resources for these purposes have the goals of tax collection, wealth distribution, and development and economic stability promotion. In Mexico, the country’s tax structure has a federal, state and municipal division. Most resources are collected at the first level and through a participation process part of these resource are shifted to state governments. Both kinds of main taxes of the country are the “impuesto sobre la renta” (ISR) and the “impuesto al valor agregado” (IVA). In an exercise, tax contributions on women’s work produce within Oaxaca’s state bureaucracy were calculated, and the estimation was that women contribute 42% percent, while men contribute 58%. As of 2003, in the tax collecting office in Oaxaca, among other activities, there are operative conditions to supply gender perspective information in different functions, underlining the following:
The kind of gender-perspective information that the fiscal administration can supply right now, with the captured information by sex is: those forced to pay taxes, those registered in the contributors register, those who pay voluntarily, those who pay under the authority’s orders, those who pay through revisions, and women’s and men’s economic contribution through the fiscal taxes.
A graduate profile sensitive to women for their training in this economic language was looked for, with the goal of creating a critical mass.
Parallel to the course, a research and analysis on the formulation and execution of gender perspective in the Guatemalan budget were done, studying health care, housing and education. Women’s invisibility in the budget and incoherence between talk and budget allotment are two outstanding findings. The results will be published in a future book. María Rosa Renzi She showed how the creation and institutionalization of agreement spaces among different government levels, civil society and international cooperation have advanced in Nicaragua. UNIFEM is working to include gender equity perspective in budget orientation in them. |
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