Gender Responsive Budgeting - Gender-responsive budgeting in Switzerland: Work in Progress

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

Gender-responsive budgeting in Switzerland: Work in Progress

Author: Mascha Madoerin, Basel, Switzerland, August 2007

The first debates on gender-responsive budgeting initiatives emerged in Switzerland in 1994, The choice of methods for conducting gender-differentiated analyses and the means by which they are conducted have been informed, and continue to be informed, by the relatively early emergence of gender-responsive budgeting (hereafter GRB) as an issue in Swiss public debate, by the circumstances under which GRB emerged, and by the fact that parliaments at local (municipal/communal), cantonal and federal levels and citizens in Switzerland’s direct democracy retain considerable influence over public finance.

In Switzerland, an analytical tool – the “BASS Method” – was developed to analyze, among other things, the impact public expenditure has on unpaid labor. If this ultimately has been and remains a fundamental requirement of any gender responsive budgeting initiative, it has proven hard to put into effect.

This report presents the specificities of the BASS Method, the projects implemented in Switzerland since 2000, their initiators and their results and finally some projects that have not applied the BASS Method are also presented.

Gender-responsive budgeting in Switzerland Work in Progress