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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.| Senegal |
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Title: Senegal Author: UNICEF Date: 2005
This report outlines the outputs, activities, future plans and findings to date, from the national level gender budget initiative in Senegal. Over the few last years, Senegal has gone through significant political change, with a major shift in the political leadership. The new government is supportive of women’s participation at decision-making levels, and women's representation in strategic ministerial positions has increased. However, despite growing trends towards participatory democracy, women’s contribution in the economy continues to be undermined and women’s work in the care economy remains invisible in national accounts and budget mechanisms. Implementing Partners The Project Steering Committee composed of the following: Women and men parliamentarians representing various interest groups in the Parliament; Representatives of key ministries: Ministry for the Family, Social Development and National Solidarity, which is responsible for gender mainstreaming; Ministry of Economy, Finance and Budget; Director of Previsions and Statistics; Ministry of Agriculture (given women’s predominance in the sector and the scale of women’s unpaid work); Ministry for Decentralized Cooperation; Ministry for Local Collectivities; etc. University: Faculty of economic sciences and Centre for Applied Economic research (CREA). Association of Region Councils; Association of Mayors. Representatives of the Network of African Women Economists. Key women’s organizations such as the Senegalese Council of Women, the network Siggil Jigeen, the Senegalese member organisation of WILDAF (RADI), RAFET (NGO addressing issues related to women’s work). Key civil society organizations: CONGAD (national umbrella organization for NGOs) Report End Date: February 2005 Background Over the few last years, Senegal has gone through significant political change, with a major shift in the political leadership. The new government is supportive of women’s participation at decision-making levels, and women's representation in strategic ministerial positions has increased. However, despite growing trends towards participatory democracy, women’s contribution in the economy continues to be undermined and women’s work in the care economy remains invisible in national accounts and budget mechanisms. The Government is also committed to attracting foreign direct investment as a way of sustaining growth and fighting unemployment. Given this emphasis on promoting an enabling environment for private businesses, it is crucial to monitor the implication of such policy shifts on the allocation of national budgets. Justification Currently, the national context is favourable to women’s empowerment: there are prospects for the revision of the family code; civil society organizations are vibrant; and women parliamentarians are organized. These pre-requisites present an important entry point for engendering the process of national budget mobilisation, allocation and utilisation. The gender budget initiative in Senegal is based on two key principles: the participation of all key actors in budgetary processes, and the overall shaping and implementation of the initiative. These are important in order to ensure the programme's ownership by the partners, and its sustainability through knowledge sharing adapted to the Senegalese context and priorities. Expected Outcomes: - Nationally owned gender budgets initiative launched and institutionalized - An enabling environment for promoting women’s fair share of national resources and greater visibility of women’s contribution in the economy through the establishment of an institutional framework for gender mainstreaming into the PRSP - Increased awareness and policy debate around the gender dimensions of national budgetary processes and the need to disaggregate national statistics - Increased capacity for women’s organizations to organize, lobby and advocate for gender sensitive mobilization, allocation and utilization of national resources - Follow up mechanisms for the National Gender Budgets Initiative established - Expanded outreach of the National Gender Budgets Initiative What has been realized: Main activities envisaged under this programme are: -To review national fiscal policies and data collection and compilation mechanisms to identify gender gaps, focusing on the Data Quality Assessment Framework designed for use in Poverty Social Impact Analysis (PSIA), in collaboration with the National Statistical Office and the Ministry of Finance -To develop training and advocacy tools, through a participatory process with stakeholders, based on tools developed and lessons learned in other gender budget initiatives -To carry out capacity building activities for Ministry officials, parliamentarians and civil society groups -To publish and disseminate research findings and various papers related to the initiative o Conceptualisation workshop o A set of activities towards identifying capacity building needs for engendering mechanisms for national data collection, processing and analysis In order to establish the required knowledge base for analyzing and monitoring budget processes from a gender perspective and build expertise on gender and macro economics, UNIFEM organized a training workshop on gender and macro economics in September-October 2003 in Senegal. Gender budget analysis was one of the major focus areas of this workshop, in view of the launch of the National Budgets Initiative in Senegal. In preparation for this launch, a Steering Committed supported by a Technical Committee was established in October 2003 to provide guidance and orientation, ensure national ownership of the National Budget Initiative, manage its implementation and validate the documents produced for awareness raising, advocacy and training purposes. The Steering Committee is chaired by the representative of the Ministry of the Family, Social Development and National Solidarity (MFDSSN); it includes representatives of the Ministry of Economy and Finance and other line Ministries such as the Ministry of Decentralized Cooperation and Local Collectivities, the Ministry of Agriculture, etc. The priorities of the National Gender Budgets Initiative in Senegal as defined by this Steering Committee during the working group sessions between UNIFEM and its technical advisers are: - Quantifying women’s unpaid work, their activities in the informal sector and objectives aimed at women’s empowerment - Engendering statistics and tools for data collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination in order to provide gender-disaggregated macroeconomic aggregates and gender-sensitive macroeconomic indicators A series of activities were undertaken as preliminary steps to address these priorities. In particular, the Network of African Women Economists (NAWE) undertook an analysis of the architecture of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, with a view to identify the various bodies, women’s location in the decision making process as well as the proportion of women among the various professional groups and positions. A detailed review of the resource mobilization and allocation processes was also carried out. The strategy developed by the Steering Committee in collaboration with UNIFEM, builds on three (3) pillars: -The establishment of a continuing dialogue between statistics producers and users on the quality of data required for a gender analysis of macroeconomic policies -A scientific, systematic and participatory approach based on the formulation of evidence-based and solid arguments for decision makers and statistics producers to make the necessary changes at all levels of statistics production and dissemination -The establishment of a clear link between women’s empowerment objectives and budgets allocation, including through the gender budgeting exercise on the Third Plan Reference Framework (Plan d’Action National pour l’avancement de la Femme PANAF) formulated by the Ministry of Women, Social development and National Solidarity (MFDSSN) Sustainability strategy The strategy for the National Gender Budgets Initiative in Senegal has been developed with a view to ensure national ownership. As such, the establishment of a Steering Committee including the key national stakeholders under the leadership of the national women’s machinery has been a strategic priority. In addition, the was grounded in the the on-going budgetary reforms undertaken by the Government of Senegal, including the decentralization process and the promotion of result-oriented approaches to planning and programming. This context seems to provide more opportunities for gender mainstreaming into government budgeting processes. Moreover, it has allowed for the integration of the National Gender Budgets Initiative in an on-going reform process from the outset – as opposed to it being an isolated and one-time activity -thereby ensuring its sustainability. Last Updated: March 2005 |
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