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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.| Uganda |
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Title: Uganda Author: UNIFEM Date: 2002-2005 This report highlights the progress of the work the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) has been doing on gender budget analysis at the national level in Uganda. Uganda has initiated various efforts to address gender inequalities in development to ensure sustainable poverty reduction. Collaborating with non-governmental organizations like Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), gender equality and women's empowerment has been one of the key goals for the past years. Initiatives to mainstream gender in a variety of sectors has been introduced, and will converge into a gender responsive Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). However, a main challenge is how to develop corresponding gender responsive budgets to complement the existing gender responsive policies and programmes.
Implementing partners
The Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) is a women's non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1995. Its mission to promote gender equality in all decision making through advocacy, training, research and publishing. FOWODE is governed by a General Assembly, which elects an executive committee every two years. The Executive Committee oversees the implementation of the programmes and raises funds. The FOWODE center has six professional programme officers; five support staff and one intern. Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) has been implementing a gender budget project for the last three years. The goal of the project is to achieve gender-balanced national and district budgets that address the needs of women and men, girls and boys equitably and give full attention to other marginalised groups like people with disabilities. The initiative’s primary stakeholders include the Ministry of Finance, The Ministry of Gender and Social Development, and local governments (Kabale and Luwero districts). As secondary stakeholders, the initiative includes the gender budget coalition (its membership includes national and district NGOs, the media, academicians and researchers with interest in gender budgeting, and members of parliament.
Starting date: August 2002
End Date of Report: February 2005
Background
Uganda has initiated various efforts to address gender inequalities in development to ensure sustainable poverty reduction. Collaborating with non-governmental organizations like Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), gender equality and women's empowerment has been one of the key goals for the past years. Initiatives to mainstream gender in a variety of sectors has been introduced, and will converge into a gender responsive Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). However, a main challenge is how to develop corresponding gender responsive budgets to complement the existing gender responsive policies and programmes.
Justification
Women’s contribution to national development largely remains unrecognized, unpaid and unaccounted for. The failure to acknowledge women's contribution perpetuates and reinforces barriers to their equal rights and access to goods and services. Child rearing, family and health care are also under valued and unrecognized. Gender sensitive budgeting can make a critical contribution to remedying and addressing discrimination and inequalities, and to promoting more effective use of public resources.
As a result of FOWODE’s interest and pressure on members of parliament (MPs) for greater transparency and participation in decision-making, MPs advocated for the formulation and enactment of the budget Act, which provided for establishment of the Budget Office. FOWODE is focusing on the sectors of agriculture, health and education. UNIFEM seeks to support the goal of achieving gender-balanced national and district budgets that address the needs of women and men, girls and boys equitably. UNIFEM supports FOWODE’s capacity for outreach around gender responsive budgets and development of technical tools for integrating the gender budgets analysis into the PRSP process in Uganda. Specific areas that need to be addressed include: advocacy for increased accountability towards gender issues in the budget among policy makers and members of parliament, capacity building, and provision of tools for integrating gender considerations in the budget process.
Expected Outcomes
What has been realized
Over the past few years, Uganda has initiated various efforts to address gender inequalities in development to ensure sustainable poverty reduction. In collaboration with non-governmental organizations like Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), gender equality and women’s empowerment has been one of the key goals for the past years. Initiatives to mainstream gender in various sectors has been introduced and this is reflected in the gender responsive Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). However, the main challenge still lies implementing these policies and making available corresponding gender responsive budgets.
The Gender budget initiative in Uganda was launched in 2002 at a National Gender budget consultative workshop. This involved bringing together several civil society organizations in Uganda in order to create synergy and build awareness about gender budgeting. In this meeting, the participants developed an Action plan that identified the focus of the work to be at the local level in two districts namely: Kabale and Luwero.
Training workshops for Kabale and Luwero districts were carried out in preparation for carrying out the gender budget analysis in the two districts targeting local women councilors as well as researchers and reference persons. Sixty participants were trained in gender budget analysis out of which 80% were women. As a result women councilors were able to articulate and participate effectively in the budget debates. The workshops targeting researchers focused on the use of budget analysis tools from a gender perspective with special emphasis on preparing gender budget aware statements and beneficiary assessment tools.
Gender budget analysis of the districts budgets for the year 2002/2003 was carried out in order to generate facts and figures to back up councilors’ demands for equitable resource allocations in the budget process. The findings of the analysis were packaged in issue briefs on “Women and Men in Kabale district budget” for use in advocacy and lobbying activities.
Advocacy and lobbying activities included convening a public dialogue for each district. The districts of Luwero and Kabale have organized budget conferences for citizens. As a result, civil society organizations including FOWODE have been invited by local government to take part in key budget meetings at the district. Radio talk shows have attracted district officials to explain the budget issues to the public. Women and men in the two districts have started to influence the district budget priorities. Meetings were also organized with senior district planners, parliamentary committees on national economy, budget and social affairs, and high-level meetings with development partners.
The initiative also invested in documenting gender budget experiences at the national and local level. Two documents on experiences of implementing gender budgeting at the national and local government level were produced and disseminated. Also, FOWODE developed a website that hosts a few of the documents and resources produced. However, maintaining the website and keeping it up to date has been a challenge. In November 2004, a consultative meeting with the project stakeholders was convened in order to assess the project implementation and identify weaknesses and strengths.
Key Results
The initiative has had a great impact on the way gender is depicted and how resources are allocated. It has influenced resources in such a way that the issues of gender equity and equality have been addressed. It has demonstrated that gender is a development issue and is not the sole responsibility of the gender focal units to mainstream it but rather the finance ministries should be interested as well. Gender budgeting has demonstrated that it can be used successfully to reduce poverty. Prior to the project, gender was not considered as a category of analysis in local governments’ planning and budgeting cycle. The project has also helped to increase the impact of Kabale and Luwero local government budgets on the lives of poor women and men in the districts of operation. The initiative has made inroads in influencing thinking during this process in the following ways:
1. Gender performance at the district level
As a result of the gender budget project, there has been a change in attitude towards gender especially at the level of district technocrats and political leadership. Gender is no longer seen as a foreign concept or seen as only referring to women. There is a realization that it is necessary to address the concerns of both women and men in plans and consequently in budgets and leaders are now conscious about addressing gender gaps. The increased gender awareness has helped the technocrats realize that gender issues extend beyond the Gender Officer mandate and therefore it is each person’s responsibility to ensure that gender is mainstreamed. As a result there is a lot of consultation between the technocrats and gender officers on how to include gender in their work. This has been demonstrated in the following areas:
a) District level budget:
The central government has put up funds for enhancing gender equality in district activities (the Local Government Development Program (LGDP)). To access these funds, districts must show explicitly how funds will promote gender equality and equity in the district. The knowledge gained and awareness raised through this project can be demonstrated by the fact that Luwero and Kabale have consistently qualified to access the funds for the past two years. In the last review of the LGDP none of Luwero’s sub-counties scored below 5 and the district scored 9 (the scores are out of 10). This is a demonstration that the knowledge and skills gained are being translated into practice. As a result, the Kabale district budget now includes a budget line of Ug. Shs. 38 million which is allocated to the district council to cater for women councilors activities. Although, this is a small amount, the fact that the council has agreed to a roll up plan was a positive achievement.
b) Gendered Participation in the Delivery of Services by the Private Sector
Prior to the project, an analysis of the sex disaggregated distribution of contract awards for the provision of technical services and the procurement of goods and services provision for the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) indicated that women’s participation relative to men’s in the delivery of services is limited. The analysis of the two districts expenditures showed that most awardees of district tenders are men who mainly predominate in big contracts. The two districts now monitor the gendered participation in the delivery of services by the private sector and local organizations monitor their progress towards a more balanced distribution.
c) More equitable male/female ratios in employment and representation
The district gender budget analysis showed that there is continued bias in the district resource allocation to employee salaries and allowances. The project activities emphasized equal representation of women and men in decision-making processes. As a result, the Luwero district has taken deliberate initiatives to increase the numbers of women in decision-making positions. The analysis findings showed that women were under-represented in all categories with the exception of lower positions. In 2003, women constituted only 13.2% of the filled district and sub-county staffing positions in the different technical departments in Kabale, and were over-represented in lower salary scale group (86.7%). The gendered representation in the political leadership is similar to that in the technical establishment. All Chairpersons of District Executive Committees, the District Tender Boards, District Service Committees (DSCs), and the District Land Boards and the Public Accounts Committees (PAC) in the two districts are men. In Luwero, two out of the six members of the tender board are women. Men also constituted the majority (4) of the six members of the DSC.
d) Increase in production and availability of sex- disaggregated data.
Sex disaggregated data is very important if gender budgeting is to be successfully implemented especially since it forms the basis for planning equitably for women and men. This was emphasized throughout the initiative. In Kabale, the district planning unit has started to generate some sex data, which can be used to analyze the situation of women and men in the district. Luwero district through the planning unit has begun disaggregating data by sex. However, increased resources are needed to publish this data and to continuously update it.
2. More Gender Sensitive National budgeting processes
The project has further influenced the way National budget guidelines are structured. Through the advocacy activities, the need for central government through the ministry of finance to make gender sensitive budget guidelines was emphasized. The 2005/06 budget circular that was issued in September 2004 has been made gender sensitive. It is now a requirement for ministries to show how their budgets will address the issues of gender equity and equality.
3 Documentation and information dissemination
The project has contributed to the generation and documentation of a body of knowledge on the gendered impacts of the sectoral budgets as well as potential gendered outcomes of the national budget. A key strength of the Gender budget project is its action-oriented research strategy, which involved not only sharing findings with partners but also ensured documentation of information for future use. The comprehensive gender budget analysis reports are published in large numbers and are distributed amongst stakeholders at the district, national, and sub-regional levels. The reports can be accessed by researchers and the general public from the FOWODE resource centre and web site (www.fowode.org) as reference materials. The reports are also summarised into easy-to-read “issue briefs” which are largely used for advocacy purposes. Another key strategy has been maintaining an active advocacy campaign on gender budgets issues which has resulted in an increase in media coverage of gender concerns in the economy in general and the budget in particular. Citizens actively participate in the budget process as a result.
4. Partnerships and participation
As a result of FOWODE’s networking, GBIs have expanded to more organisations and cover a wider area. Non-government agencies involved in GBIs include: Action Aid, the Association of Professional Women in Agriculture and Environment (AUPWAE), Action for Development (ACFODE), East African Women Support Initiative (EASSI), the Council for Economic Empowerment of Women in Africa (CEEWA), the Coalition for Political Accountability of Women (COPAW) and the Uganda Debt Network (UDN). The Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Gender will be implementing a GBI in 24 districts over a four-year period: 2002-2008. The initiative will focus on five priority areas, namely: agriculture, water and sanitation, health, education and roads.
Success Indicators
Linking Gender Budgeting to National Planning Processes
UNIFEM's support to FOWODE to engage with national planning processes, allowed for the following advocacy activites to occur:
Conclusions and way forward
FOWODE’s experiences in implementing the project shows that gender budgeting is a useful tool that has great potential for influencing equitable resource allocation to poor women and men as well as other disadvantaged groups.
Last Updated: March 2005
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