Gender Responsive Budgets

The following are excerpts from my article, “Gender Responsive Budgeting.” featured in the May/June issue of Dollars and Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice. Click this link for the full PDF of the article or better yet, support Dollars and Sense by buying the magazine. (To see the articles in the May/June issue go to www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0506toc.html)

Terms that are referenced in the full text of the article are defined at the end.

...Today, gender responsive budgeting is happening in over 60 countries, including Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the UK, Bangladesh, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, and India. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recently announced his commitment to including gender equality principles in the national budget for this fiscal year.

GRB advocates in many countries have discovered that popular education is a critical first step. The pioneering WBI in South Africa today focuses primarily outside of government; the group concentrates on grassroots popular education and outreach to municipal officials. Debbie Budlender of the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, one of the leaders of the WBI, emphasizes that “even parliamentarians have limited say in budget matters. The WBI’s...advocacy has been strong because it has been based firmly on the understanding that budgets do not stand alone—that while no policy can be effective without an adequate budget, similarly budgetary battles can only be won if they are waged on the basis of the policies and principles underlying them.” Likewise, Mary Rusimbi, executive director of the Tanzanian Gender Networking Programme, highlights the need for popular education: “The first thing we discovered is that we as women, and the public in general, hardly knew how the budget was made and how the government budget machinery worked. We used [the gender budget campaign] as one important opportunity to learn about the budget and demystify it for the public.”

GRB activists also recognize the need to view gender in the budget process in a dynamic interaction with issues of race and class. According to Nisreen Alami, program specialist in the Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives office of UNIFEM, “The GRB work is addressing not only women’s rights and women’s equality but also social justice in relation to class, with an emphasis on how women with the greatest disadvantage experience the impact of budgets and economic policy. Women from different classes enjoy different entitlements and access to services, so it is crucial to improve the investment in rural women, black women, and poor women.”

...The only government in the United States that has implemented a gender-responsive budget initiative is the city of San Francisco. The Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights (WILD), which was formed after the 1995 Beijing conference, mobilized to bring gender issues to the human rights table in San Francisco. Working with the Commission on the Status of Women and other groups, and politicians, WILD led the effort to pass a binding local CEDAW ordinance...

CEDAW is also being used as a focus for “bringing Beijing home” in New York City, which has begun to develop a GRB ordinance, carry out a race and gender analysis of city expenditures and services, and create a task force to monitor the process. Chicago and Boston, along with Los Angeles and several other California cities, are also moving to adopt this women’s human rights strategy...

As in other countries, GRB in the United States will require political will inside and outside government (including the United States ratification of CEDAW), mobilizing people at the state and local levels to intervene in budget decisions and processes, and creative alliances between activists, organizations, politicians, budget experts, and academics to work for budgets and policies that promote economic fairness for all people. As GRB pioneer Diane Elson said: “Money is not the bottom line. Human rights and human well-being are the bottom line.”

What are the aims of gender responsive budgeting? According to UNIFEM, gender responsive budgets promote:

Equality: Gender equality becomes a goal and an indicator of economic governance. Governments and NGOs can use CEDAW and other human rights instruments to see if the rights of women are being promoted in public budgeting.

Accountability: Countries are held to the commitments they have made in international agreements because the budget makes national priorities and the effects of decisions clear.

Efficiency: Gender inequality is bad economic and social policy, slowing development and productivity for the country as a whole.

Transparency: More open, participatory, and responsive budgets engage more people in crucial economic and budget decisions. Women have been often left out of these decisions, so opening up the budget processes and decisions is crucial for encouraging full civic participation.

GRB: Gender Responsive Budgeting
UNIFEM: United Nations Development Fund for Women
WBI: Women’s Budget Initiative
CEDAW: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women