Gender-responsive budgeting as a tool for alternative economic planning (ANSA-Africa, 2 Aug 2010)

When someone last counted, in 2002 it seems, more than 60 countries were doing Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB), and since then the numbers have increased. Sixty countries is a significant number given that GRB is a tool that emerged only in the 1980s. It is now in the gaze of the global community, not as much for what it has done but more so for the potential it offers. What actually does GRB offer, and what value does it add to planning and budgeting?  

GRB is a loose term for several different kinds of efforts that can be located at the intersection of gender and budgets. Segregating public expenditure for women, which is commonly being done in many countries as the first step in GRB, is just one of the several methodologies that GRB offers. Others include the commonly known tools of gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessment, gender-disaggregated analysis of the impact of the budget on time use, gender-aware medium-term economic policy framework and so on.  

However, GRB is an evolving area of work. Several new and innovative strategies are being tried under GRB, and it is being applied to new areas. Budgeting for laws pertaining to women's rights, such as domestic violence laws and maintenance laws, and applying GRB to HIV and AIDS, to revenue mobilisation and to audits are just some such examples of evolving areas of GRB. Hence, when we talk about GRB, the gamut of issues and approaches that this includes is quite wide and is becoming wider with time.  The common perception among policymakers seems to be that so long as they are not explicitly discriminating against women in their policies, they are doing what needs to be done for women. What is often not recognised is that needs of men and women are different, and unless policies factor this in, they will not be gender-responsive.  

The commonly known five-step framework on GRB tries to challenge this method of policymaking. By beginning with a situation analysis of men and women in a particular sector, it lays the foundation for explicitly recognising disadvantages women face. This also locates GRB in the larger context of the realities of the world we live in, where gender discrimination is rampant. The second step is an assessment of the extent to which the sector�'s policy addresses the gender issues and gaps described in the first step. This helps scrutinise the match or the mismatch between the policies and women�'s needs. The third step is to assess the adequacy of budget allocations to implement the gender-sensitive policies and programmes identified. This step helps to identify the resource gaps. The fourth step entails monitoring whether the money was spent as planned, what was delivered and to whom. This involves checking both financial performance and the physical deliverables (disaggregated by sex). And the last step is assessment of the impact of the policy/programme/scheme through a gender lens.