Dr Pritha Chatterjee
Gender budgeting is a methodology proposed by the feminist economist Diane Elson in the 1990s to analyse and reformulate public budgets from a gender equity perspective. It is one of the many efforts on gender mainstreaming and is a way to ensure a ‘budget for everyone’ and considers the unique and diverse needs of every person.
The concept of gender budgeting was first introduced in Australia in 1984 when different government departments and entities were asked to re-assess the impact of budgeting on women and girls. It does not entail a separate budget for women but is a continuous process of incorporating a gender lens throughout the budget cycle, to ensure equitable allocation and use of public goods and resources between women and men.
Why is gender budgeting important?
The Fourth World Conference on Women further restated the importance of gender budgeting. It is here that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was formed. Initiated in 1995, it has been over 30 years after the Beijing Declaration, yet the importance of integrating the gender perspective in budgetary and fiscal decisions for creating an equitable environment for women and girls, holds its essence even today.
Gender budgeting as a practice would ensure accountability and transparency in the way the fiscal system works in a country and it can be a strong lever to bridge the gaps in achieving gender parity which is projected to take 134 years, as the latest Global Gender Gap report by the World Economic Forum reveals.
As a mandate, gender budgeting should be a substantial part of the overall budget of any country and should be further embedded across different departments/ministries to address some of the structural hindrances around women’s access to paid jobs, education, skill development, health services and a lot more.
How can gender budgeting be put into practice?
It can be adopted as a practice both at a national level as well as by the municipalities at the local level by any country. Further, the indicator 5.c.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) measures government efforts to track budget allocations for gender equality through the public financial management cycle and to make these allocations publicly available.
Some of the challenges around appropriate gender budgeting can be addressed through some of these approaches and more:
- Awareness building campaigns
- Increase in the share of gender budgeting to total public expenditure and the share of women-specific schemes to gender budgeting
- Identification of the underlying causes of poor performance
- Necessary changes in design
- Appropriate utilisation of funds
- Increased participation of women in the budgeting process
[Dr Pritha Chatterjee is Lead – Global Positioning, at Breakthrough Trust]
