Budgets and financial allocations for development made by governments often do not have specific allocations for gender issues. Nor are they sensitively budgeted to the needs of women. In order for women’s groups to advocate for change, not only do they have to move from the basic needs to a basic rights perspective but also move from being recipients of services to getting access and control over the resources needed to achieve equality.

In a comprehensive paper review of “Gender Budgeting, the problems and perspectives”, presented by John R. Bartle from the School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska, Omaha and Marilyn Marks Rubin, John Jay College, City University of New York, in 2002, several country analyses were provided. These have been an eye-opener for many who wish to learn more about gender budgeting.

Learning from other country initiatives
The first gender budget exercise was undertaken in Australia in 1984. It resulted in a comprehensive analysis of federal expenditures (but not revenues). However this effort was shut down in 1996. One of the lessons of the Australian case is that gender sensitive budgeting exercises that are not ‘owned’ widely by civil society groups are vulnerable to ideological shifts within the state.

In the Philippines, since 1994,
agencies are required to allocate at least 5% of their budgets to “the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of gender and development plans.” A national commission has published an analysis of expenditures for 19 agencies. Issues that had to be addressed were: need for technical assistance, difficulty in monitoring agency performance, and resistance from budget officers.

The process in South Africa began in 1997, with the participation of several agencies, including revenue collection as well as spending agencies. Measures to improve data collection were necessary. “The experience of South Africa indicates that engendering the national budget is a process which has to be developed over a period of time.” However, it does appear to be having an impact, both in statements of the Director-General of Finance and in the gender-sensitive national budget address. The budget, especially relating to spending, are disaggregated by gender. “This aim is to focus attention increasingly to government outputs and the impact of government expenditure.” In Spain, the government of the Basque Country has shown interest in introducing a gender sensitive budget approach. In 2000 there were two initiatives, which moved the process forward. The Basque Country’s women’s office, Emakunde, in partnership with the education information technology company, Infopolis, established a virtual library of materials on gender budgets. These materials are available on the web (www.infopolis.es/usuarios/bibliotec.htm).


In addition, Rhonda Sharp was invited to provide a briefing on gender budgets to the President of the Basque Country, his Finance Minister and senior government officials. In Sri Lanka, five ministries were selected in 1998 to examine the gender impact of recurrent spending, as well as the gender distribution of public sector employment. One common finding was “that a proper mechanism is to be developed to collect data disaggregated by gender”. The procedures and mechanisms identified in this study to gather information, as a continuous process will be used for future policy formulation. Commonwealth Secretariat (ComSec) conducted and published the findings in the following year, it is reported that measures to reduce gender bias have been undertaken in the educational, agricultural and industrial sectors.

International agencies support initiatives
Various International agencies have been supporting partners to develop gender budgets in national programmes. The Commonwealth Secretariat (ComSec) has had an explicit programme of support for gender budget initiatives since 1996. The United Nations Development Fund for Women (Unifem) has not had an explicit programme but has, nevertheless, provided support of various kinds under other programme headings. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has more recently become interested in supporting these initiatives, and collaborated with ComSec and Unifem in raising money for, and planning, continued support. The above are the leaders in the field of gender budgeting.

The overall objective of the partners’ programme is ‘to advocate for and support the engendering of economic governance and leadership in order to increase women’s participation in decision-making processes that shape their lives and to respond to challenges emerging from the process of globalisation’.