Gender Responsive Budgeting

Features

What's new on this site?

The following documents were recently added to the website. Please visit regularly for new uploads.

Impact of Gender Budgeting on Women Empowerment

UNIFEM's work in support of gender responsive budgeting

Budget Support: As good as the strategy it finances

Gender and Participatory Budgeting- DFID

Application of the gender policy marker by German Bilateral Development Agencies

Morocco Gender Report 2008

How do DAC statistics measure gender equality focused aid?

Gender Budgeting Guidelines and Analytical Tools at local level in Uganda

Genre et décentralisation au Sénégal

Rapport du Séminaire sur la prise en compte du genre dans le travail parlementaire- Burundi 2008

Gender Budgets: an overview- Canada

WHAT IS GRB?

"Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is about ensuring that government budgets and the policies and programs that underlie them address the needs and interests of individuals that belong to different social groups. Thus, GRB looks at biases that can arise because a person is male or female, but at the same time considers disadvantage suffered as a result of ethnicity, caste, class or poverty status, location and age. GRB is not about separate budgets for women or men nor about budgets divided equally. It is about determining where the needs of men and women are the same, and where they differ. Where the needs are different, allocations should be different."

Debbie Budlender 2006

Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives Brochure

NEW! GRB VIDEOS

MOROCCO

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.

Click here to watch Morocco video

BOLIVIA

In Cochabamba, Bolivia, UNIFEM has made significant strides in teaching local women how to seek local government funding for projects that can benefit them. UNIFEM developed and sponsored local workshops in which women were educated on the city budget: where government money comes from, how it is distributed, and what strategies to use in applying for government funds. The workshops helped the women envision a new potential for what they can do for themselves, and helped them better understand what kinds of demands they can make on their own government.

Click here to watch Bolivia video

INDIA

Incorporating a gender perspective in government budgets can ensure that resources are allocated towards women's priorities to eliminate gender gaps. This can be achieved through women's participation in budget policymaking and gender budget analysis. This video presents show how this is working in practice in a GRB initiative supported by UNIFEM in Mysore, India.

Click here to watch India video

Nepal

Title: Nepal

Author: UNICEF

Date: 2001-2005

This report outlines the gender budget initiative at the national level in Nepal. The budgetary policies and economics generally appear to be gender neutral. Taxes, revenues and expenditures are not gendered concepts. However this appearance of gender neutrality is more accurately described as gender blindness. The way in which a national budget is usually formulated, ignores the different, socially determined roles, responsibilities, capabilities of women and men and rights conferred on them respectively. Because women and men lead different economic lives, they face different constraints and assume different socially determined responsibilities and consequently make different choices. Women therefore, are affected by and tend to have different responses to the budget than men. If budgets fail to be responsive to the needs and demands of the poor and for women, resources are not being adequately directed toward the achievement of equality and equity goals.

Implementing partners

Ministry of Finance
Ministry of Women and Social Welfare
Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS)

Starting date: 15 December, 2001-15 February, 2002
End Date of Report: February 2005

Background

In Nepal, budgetary policies and economics generally appear to be gender neutral. Taxes, revenues and expenditures are not gendered concepts. However this appearance of gender neutrality is more accurately described as gender blindness. The way in which a national budget is usually formulated, ignores the different, socially determined roles, responsibilities, capabilities of women and men and rights conferred on them respectively. Because women and men lead different economic lives, they face different constraints and assume different socially determined responsibilities and consequently make different choices. Women therefore, are affected by and tend to have different responses to the budget than men. If budgets fail to be responsive to the needs and demands of the poor and for women, resources are not being adequately directed toward the achievement of equality and equity goals.

Justification

In 1994, UNIFEM initiated a project on mainstreaming gender considerations into national development with the National Planning Commission. In the course of that project, four different sectors of the Eighth Plan were analysed through a gender perspective, including agriculture, energy, tourism, labour and industry. Through the project, the Planning Commission developed a gender auditing module. Many of the recommendations were incorporated into the Ninth Plan (1997-2002) -- the main one being to mainstream gender in the entire Development Plan. For the first time in Nepal, gender was raised as an issue under three headings -- gender equality, gender mainstreaming and empowerment of women. The Tenth Plan has continued to employ the same module. It also, for the first time, used the term “gender budgets” as a tool for mainstreaming gender.

Against this background, UNIFEM commissioned a study, which focused on gender auditing of the budgetary process, its allocations, expenditure and sources of revenue. It also examined from a gender perspective polices of resource mobilization and taxation to identify gaps that create gender inequality, which facilitated taking corrective measures. This includes gender analysis of the entire budget of the current and previous two fiscal years through looking at appropriation, actual expenditure (budget estimate, revised estimate and annual expenditure), as well as revenue and taxation. The analysis linked expenditure with activities and outcomes using both secondary and primary data in three districts as well as the resource allocation pattern at District Development Committee (DDC) and Village Development Committee (VDC) levels.

What has been realized:

Through this project, UNIFEM has supported a series of activities towards the sensitization of Gender Focal Points of line ministries on "Gender Budgets". This represented a timely intervention to support the application of the guidelines of the Ministry of Finance for the inclusion of gender dimension in the budgeting exercises undertaken by line ministries for the Fiscal Year 2060/2061 (2003/2004). The guidelines issued by the government have been translated into the local language and sent to all the districts for implementation at the local level. The National Planning Commission revised the guidelines to allow for application at local and central levels. In the meantime, the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare requested the the National Planning Commission to instruct all ministries to consult with the gender focal points in their ministries in the budget formulation stages. Other opportunities for GRB work in Nepal was reflected in the fact that the Tenth Plan (2002-2007) launched by the government of Nepal stated that all legal policies, programmes and budgets will be analyzed from a gender perspective.

In 2003, a report entitled “Gender budget Audit in Nepal” was finalized through a collaborative partnership between UNIFEM and UNDP. The report has been disseminated to all the gender focal persons and representatives of the Planning Divisions of the line ministries, the National Planning Commission and Ministry of Finance. Furthermore, in 2004 this work has been taken up by UNDP with the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Local Development for application of gender responsive budgeting and conducting gender audit at local levels. This strategy seeks to involve local government officials in carrying out this work.

In 2004, the process for the drafting of the Economic Survey has included consultations and inputs from experts on GRB. These consultations focused on the following:

Reviewing the guidelines sent by the Ministry of Finance to all line ministries for the formulation of general budget for their annual programme from gender perspectives
Reviewing the guidelines sent by the National Planning Commission to all ministries for the formulation of development budget for their annual programme from gender perspectives
Reviewing the Annual Economic Survey from gender perspectives

UNIFEM consolidated the inputs from these consultations and sent a draft to the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare for inclusion in the final draft of the Economic Survey. As a result, for the first time a separate chapter on women has been incorporated in the Annual Economic Survey.

Finally in 2004, UNIFEM organized a capacity building workshop for gender focal points of all the ministries, planning officers of all the ministries and the officials of the Ministry of Finance around gender responsive budgeting. During the workshop line ministries’ staff developed a Plan of Action for the coming year to take the Gender Budget Exercise further.

Impact and Outcome:

The gender budget audit report for Nepal was well received both by the government and academicians alike
The National Planning Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare have requested that the exercise on "Gender Budget" needs to follow a concrete application plan
Greater awareness and interest in gender budgets among various stakeholders

Sustainability strategy:

In order to ensure sustainability, the programme is building partnerships that go beyond GRB Program pilot activities and include pro-poor budget groups and others. This could help towards more participatory, transparent and accountable budgeting in Nepal. The Citizen's Poverty Watch Forum (CPWF) in Nepal has been engaged in applied budget work in the country. UNIFEM GRB Program and its partners are holding discussions with pro-poor budget groups on key issues (such as HIV/AIDS, corruption, etc.) or around budget advocacy (engaging with the budget debates in parliament) and engaging with macroeconomic policy processes. These alliances could be in the form of joint workshops, integrating modules into each others’ training sessions, keeping each other on online discussion groups, databases, dissemination lists and invitations for events. These efforts could then result in mainstreaming gender in pro-poor budget analysis/advocacy and building joint strategies around engaging/influencing the PRSP process.

UNIFEM also continues to facilitate exchange of experiences with oother countries in the region and facilitates exchange of technical expertise, technical resources and lessons learnt.

Success indicators:

The government takes the findings seriously and uses it to change policy
The departments of government make “gender impact” an important part of their programmes
Women’s capacity built to participate in governance included in policy
Implementation of the follow-up activities on the basis of the recommendations of the Study
Sensitization of the stakeholders on the issue of "Gender Budget"

Successful strategies:

UNIFEM’s initial Collaboration with UNDP has enabled the latter to take gender budgeting forward with the Ministry of Local Development. This has also led to other ministries approaching UNIFEM to replicate this approach in their respective ministries.

UNIFEM has a strong network of experts and policy makers who advocate on gender issues and are trusting of UNIFEM’s expertise.

A number of central government ministries have been engaged in GRB in Nepal. The key ministries interested in the GRB concepts and methods include the Ministry of Finance, the National Planning Commission and the Women’s Ministry. The Vice Chair and Member of National Planning Commission of Nepal have also provided leadership support to the GRB exercise. As a result, the GRB effort got recognition in a number of government documents including the National Economic Survey of Nepal, the 10th 5 year plan and the National Planning Commission Budget Guidelines.

UNIFEM and UNDP also joined forces in Nepal to work on gender auditing together. In Nepal, gender budget analysis has been conducted in education, health and agriculture sectors building on gender audits of UNDP in Nepal.

Last Updated: March 2005