Gender Budgeting: A Tool for Promoting Economic Gender Equity

Public budgets shape economies, fund essential services, and determine how resources reach communities. Yet for decades, these budgets have operated under an assumption of neutrality that masked significant gender disparities. Gender budgeting challenges this assumption by examining how government spending and revenue policies impact women and men differently, and restructuring these budgets to promote genuine economic equality.

The concept of gender budgeting 🔗

Gender budgeting is a strategy to achieve equality between women and men by focusing on how public resources are collected and spent. Rather than creating separate budgets for women, this approach analyzes how existing budgets affect different groups and adjusts allocations to address inequalities.

The fundamental premise is that budgets are never truly neutral. What appears as gender-neutral policy often reflects gender blindness. For instance, the global value of unpaid care and domestic work performed by women aged 15 and over stands at around $10.8 trillion annually, three times the size of the world’s tech industry. Traditional budgets routinely overlook this massive economic contribution, leading to policies that inadvertently disadvantage women.

According to the Council of Europe’s widely-used definition, gender budgeting involves conducting a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process, and restructuring revenues and expenditures to promote gender equality. When properly implemented, gender budgeting is simply good budgeting.

Implementing gender-responsive budgets 🔗

Gender-responsive budgets require systematic integration throughout the entire budget cycle, from planning and preparation through execution to monitoring and evaluation. This comprehensive approach ensures that gender considerations inform every fiscal decision.

Essential components of implementation 🔗

Political commitment and institutional frameworks: Successful gender budgeting initiatives require leadership from the highest levels of government. Countries like Austria, Bolivia, and Rwanda have enshrined gender budgeting in their constitutions, ensuring continuity regardless of political changes. The ministry of finance typically leads these efforts, working alongside gender ministries, parliamentary committees, and civil society organizations.

Data collection and analysis: Gender budgeting depends on robust sex-disaggregated data to understand how policies affect different populations. Analysis examines several key questions: How do budgetary measures impact gender equality? Do they reduce inequalities, exacerbate them, or leave them unchanged? What barriers prevent equal access to services and resources?

Budget restructuring based on evidence: Analysis alone achieves nothing without action. Gender budgeting requires governments to adjust allocations and amend policies based on evidence. This restructuring ensures resources flow toward addressing documented disparities while improving overall budget efficiency.

Transparency and accountability mechanisms: Gender budget statements accompanying annual budgets make government commitments visible and measurable. Countries including Australia, Bangladesh, India, Korea, Morocco, and Nepal issue various forms of these statements, enabling parliaments and citizens to track progress toward gender equality goals.

Tracking systems and measurement 🔗

The Sustainable Development Goals include an indicator that measures the proportion of governments with systems to track and make public resource allocations for gender equality. However, data from 105 countries shows that only 26 percent have comprehensive tracking systems. Without these systems, countries cannot effectively cost, allocate, and spend resources to implement gender equality laws and policies.

The International Monetary Fund developed a Gender Budgeting Index to assess country performance across different stages of the budget cycle. Research shows governments generally perform better in institutional framework development and budget preparation compared to impact assessments, execution reporting, and auditing.

Impact of gender budgeting on economic development 🔗

Gender budgeting generates both social and economic benefits. Research demonstrates that addressing gender inequality through fiscal policy contributes to stronger, more inclusive economic growth.

Macroeconomic gains 🔗

Studies by the European Institute for Gender Equality show that improving gender equality could increase GDP per capita in the EU by up to 9.6 percent by 2050. This growth would stem from several factors: between 6.3 and 10.5 million additional jobs created, with approximately 70 percent filled by women; increased employment productivity as more women enter sectors with skill shortages; and enhanced productive capacity across the economy.

Closing gaps in labor force participation and working hours could boost GDP by an average of 9.2 percent across OECD countries by 2060. These projections reflect the substantial economic potential that remains untapped when half the population faces systematic barriers to full economic participation.

Improved public services and outcomes 🔗

Gender budgeting enhances the effectiveness of public spending by ensuring services meet the actual needs of diverse populations. In education, for example, Indian states with gender budgeting efforts made more progress on gender equality in primary school enrollment than those without. The approach surfaces issues that might otherwise remain invisible, such as inadequate allocations for sexual and reproductive health or gaps in infrastructure that disproportionately burden women.

Fiscal efficiency and effectiveness 🔗

By revealing the full economic picture, including unpaid care work and uneven resource distribution within households, gender budgeting enables more informed policy decisions. Governments can avoid unintended negative consequences and target resources where they will generate the greatest social and economic returns. This evidence-based approach strengthens both the equity and efficiency of public finance management.

Global examples and best practices in gender budgeting 🔗

Countries worldwide have developed diverse approaches to gender budgeting, adapted to their specific contexts and institutional structures.

Austria: Constitutional commitment and systematic integration 🔗

Austria stands as a global pioneer, making gender equality one of nine elements against which all budget proposals are assessed. The country has embedded gender perspectives throughout its performance-based budgeting framework. Key features include mandatory gender analysis of new legal acts and major projects, performance targets on gender equality published online, and regular reporting to parliament on progress. The Austrian Supreme Audit Institution has published 55 audit reports in recent years examining tax and sectoral expenditure policies from a gender perspective.

Rwanda: Program-based integration and monitoring 🔗

Rwanda has integrated gender budgeting into its program-based budgeting approach, with strong leadership from the Ministry of Finance. The national gender strategy addresses early childhood education, gender-based violence, land management, and education. The government routinely assesses budget adequacy to identify resource gaps and publishes annual gender budget statements showing objectives, allocations, and actual execution. This transparency enables both government and civil society to follow the money and assess whether budgets deliver on policy commitments.

India: Federal and state-level implementation 🔗

India presents a particularly interesting case due to its federal structure, with gender budgeting adopted at both national and state levels. The state of Kerala introduced a gender budgeting statement in its budget documents in 2008-09, with targeted spending for infrastructure to support women’s greater involvement in economic and public life. Different states have developed varied approaches, providing valuable comparative evidence on implementation strategies.

Morocco: Centers of excellence and technical capacity 🔗

Morocco established the Center of Excellence for Gender-Responsive Budgeting in partnership with UN Women in 2013. The yearly Gender Budget Report provides lawmakers with insights into how public policies advance gender equality at local and national levels, informing votes on finance bills. This institutionalized approach builds sustained technical capacity while maintaining political visibility.

Colombia: Legal mandate and budget tracers 🔗

Colombia’s National Development Plan fully integrates gender equality and includes a gender budget tracer mandated by law. This tool tracks how budgets are allocated and spent, with annual presentations to parliament. When the latest tracer identified inadequate allocations for sexual and reproductive health, civil society used this evidence to successfully advocate for budget increases, demonstrating how transparency enables effective advocacy.

Australia: The pioneering approach 🔗

Australia introduced the world’s first Women’s Budget Statement in 1984, establishing a model that many countries have since followed. This initiative emerged from the women’s movement rather than government, illustrating the important role of civil society in driving gender budgeting reforms.

Over 100 countries have now initiated gender budgeting efforts. While approaches vary, successful initiatives share common elements: high-level political commitment, technical capacity for gender analysis, robust data systems, civil society engagement, and mechanisms for transparency and accountability. UN Women has supported more than 80 countries to design and implement gender-responsive budgets over the past two decades.

What do you think? How might gender budgeting change public policy priorities in your community? What challenges might governments face in shifting from gender-blind to gender-responsive budgeting, and how could these be addressed?

References

1. https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/tools-methods/gender-budgeting
2. https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-gender-responsive-budgeting
3. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16149.pdf
4. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/03/do-the-math-include-women-in-government-budgets
5. https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/gender-budgeting.html
6. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2016/07/26/14/42/NA072816-New-IMF-Study-Data-Tool-Track-Fiscal-Policies
7. https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2021/English/wpiea2021269-print-pdf.ashx