Mercy Global Concern - 2003
What is a Gender Budget Initiative?
"If you want to see which way a country is headed, look at the country's
budget and see how it allocates resources for women and children"
At a recent meeting held by UNIFEM in New York, the issue of Gender Responsive
Budgets was discussed. Gender Budget analysis can be done in various ways, depending
on the role of government and civil society. When governments have made strong
commitments to gender equality objectives it makes sense to first examine the
policy, then look at the budget to see whether or not adequate resources are
allocated to implement it.
Success of gender responsive budget initiatives is not only measured in terms
of budget changes and priorities but may also be reflected in the extent to
which women begin to participate in the decision-making process.
Following are some of the tools that have been developed, with examples
of how they have been used in different countries.
1. Gender-aware Policy Appraisal: an analysis from a gender perspective
of the policies and programmes funded by the budget which asks: " In what
ways are the policies and the resource allocations that support them likely
to reduce or increase gender inequality?
The South African government's land reform programme has entailed a variety
of expenditure increases, including owner compensation and micro-finance programmes.
Women's access to good land and the financial resources needed to develop it,
however, is impeded by legal restrictions on women's land ownership and rights
to conclude contracts, leaving them far less able to benefit from the reform
process and related expenditures. When the Department of Land Affairs received
this gender aware appraisal of its land reform programme, it began to integrate
gender concerns into its monitoring and evaluation system and to provide gender
training for staff.
2. Gender-disaggregated Public Expenditure Incidence Analysis: as
estimate of the distribution of budget resources (or cuts in these resources
among males and females by measuring the unit costs of providing a given service
and multiplying by the number of units utilized by each group.
In Sri Lanka, changes to the food ration and subsidy programme in the 1980s
revealed that despite rapid economic growth, the real value of food stamps eroded
in the first half of the decade and there was a decline in the real income of
the poor. A gender- disaggregated analysis concluded that within poor households,
girls and women bore the brunt of the resulting food deficit, citing higher
levels of malnutrition among young girls and declining birth weights of babies
born to low-income families.
3. Gender-disaggregated Beneficiary Assessments: participatory surveys
of focus group studies designed to find out how men and women evaluate whether
public services meet their needs and how existing patterns of public expenditure
accord with their priorities. In 1996, an NGO-initiated Women's Budget Project
asked U.S. women about how they would allocate national budget resources.
They calculated the cost of various defense programmes and compared them to
potential social welfare expenditure, asking: Which would you choose? Fund
the F-22 fighter plane for the current year ($2.1 billion) OR pay the annual
health care expenses for 1.3 million American women? Fund military attack
submarines for the current year ($ 1.7 billion) OR provide low-income home
energy assistance for 5.6 million households? They estimated the saving from
the proposed military spending cuts and outlined ways in which these could
be invested to benefit women, including employment and training programmes,
anti violence campaigns and services for the elderly, the majority of whom
are women.
4. Gender-disaggregated Analysis of the Impact of the Budget on Time Use:
a calculation of the link between budget allocations and their effect
on how household members spend their time, using household time- use surveys.
Between 1983 and 1985, real per capita expenditure on health fell by 16 per
cent in Zambia. People had to travel greater distances and wait for longer periods
of time to get health care treatment. Interviews with Zambian women about their
time use revealed that they had to spend more time caring for sick family members,
including time spent in hospitals providing meals and nursing care, and had
less time to spend on farming.
5. Gender-aware Medium Term Macroeconomic Policy Framework: to access
the impact of economic policies on women, focusing on aggregate fiscal, monetary
policies and economic policies designed to promote globalization and reduce
poverty.
In 1996, the South African government invited members of the Women's Budget
Project to address a workshop on the development of a new 'Medium Term Expenditure
Framework', in order to plan expenditure on a 3 year rolling basis rather than
year by year. While the National Expenditure Survey produced by the Ministry
of Finance in 1999 incorporated more gender analysis, no government has yet
adopted a fully gender-aware economic policy framework.
6. Gender-disaggregated Revenue Incidence Analysis: a calculation
of the relative amount of direct and indirect and/ or user fees paid by women
as opposed to men.
In many countries, tax subsidization of retirement savings is gender biased
because women have fewer opportunities for full time employment with pension
benefits, experience more frequent labour force interruptions due to care-giving
responsibilities and earn less than men on average, thus accruing lower benefits.
In Canada, speaking to a parliamentary finance commission, an NGO demonstrated
the differential impact of the current system of tax benefits for private retirement
savings on women and men, promoting a campaign to reform the government -sponsored
retirement scheme.
7. Gender-aware Budget Statement: a government report that reviews
the budget, using some of the above tools, and summarizes its implications
for gender equality with different indicators, such as share of expenditure
targeted to gender equality, gender balance in government contracts or job
training, or share of expenditure for public services used mainly by women.
Several governments have taken some steps in this direction by incorporating
gender analysis in one of the budget papers, although none have yet produced
a fully developed annual statement. The government of France, for instance,
has taken a first step in 2001 by using an annex to the budget, analyzing expenditure
earmarked to promote gender equality.
Some examples of Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives
Peru
In Peru, the Flora Tristan women's organization has worked with 40 municipalities
located on the coast, the Sierra and the Amazon region of the country. A pilot
project has been developed in the Department of Junin, with a Workshop on
Gender Budgets leading up to the regional meeting of Women and Local Governments.
The workshop was aimed at women members of councils who have responsibilities
for municipal plans for women. Work at the local level is also been carried
out in Villa El Salvador, one of the largest districts of Lima, which is introducing
participatory processes into the local budget.
The Philippines
In 1994, the Philippines Government adopted a gender and development budget
policy that requires every government agency to allocate 5 per cent of its
budget for gender and development. The National Commission on the Role of
Filipino Women spearheaded the initiative, working closely with an active
and supportive women's movement. Compliance was fairly limited at first, owing
in some cases to resistance on the part of budget officers and limited capacity
and resources for monitoring and evaluation. But the project preserved, developing
tools for gender analysis, holding meetings with budget officials in each
ministry to clarify concepts and methods, and pressing for monitoring at various
levels at critical points in the budget formulation process. With support
from academics as well as activists, the group was able to publish the Women's
Budget in the Philippines in 1995, which analyzed the budget allocation for
women and men in 19 departments of governments. Between 1995 and 1998, the
number of reporting agencies rose from 19 to 69 and the allocations of women
tripled. Yet even with this threefold increase, the report concluded that,
during the same period, the gender and development budget was still less than
1 per cent.
South Africa
Prior to the election of the African National Congress in 1994, a diverse
women's coalition drew up a Charter for Effective Equality, which provided
the basis for the Women's Budget Initiative (WBI) by 2000, WBI had produced
five volumes, covering all areas of government spending as well as macroeconomics
policy, public sector employment and taxation. To make the research findings
more widely accessible, WBI published a shorter version entitled ' Money Matters'.
Over the years public awareness of gender issues had increased dramatically.
Local level initiatives are springing up in municipalities and provincial
legislatures; universities are incorporating gender budget analysis into their
curricula.
United Kingdom
In the UK, the women's Budget Group has been active since 1989, issuing press
releases on every budget on the policy agenda. The Women's Budget Group (WBG)
is a think tank group of researchers, and members of women's groups and trade
unions. They focus mainly on changes in the system, which disadvantage women.
A gender budget analysis of NEW DEAL programmes revealed that only 8 per cent
of funding goes to 'lone parents' of whom 95% are women. Yet 57 per
cent of funding goes to 'young people', of whom only 27% are women.
Deirdre Mullan RSM
New York
June 2003
|
