What can Gender Responsive Budgeting
Achieve?
Diane Elson
University of Essex
May 2011
What is Gender Responsive Budgeting?
• GRB consists of the use of tools to analyse the gender dimensions
of budgets; and adoption of procedures to ensure that the budget
supports the achievement of gender equality.
• It requires better understanding of who are the beneficiaries of
public expenditure and who contributes in different ways to pay for
public expenditure.
• It requires consideration of how budgets impact on the unpaid
work of caring for family and friends.
• It also assists in the achievement of various other objectives:
Efficiency, Effectiveness ,Transparency, Accountability.
• Civil society ( academics, women’s groups) can contribute to the
analysis.
Some Clarifications
• GRB does NOT imply that 50 per cent of tax revenues should
be paid by males and 50 per cent by females, because
women´s incomes are lower than men’s.
• GRB does NOT imply that 50 per cent of spending on EACH
programme should accrue to females and 50 per cent should
accrue to males, because women and girls and men and boys
are present in different proportions in the groups relevant to
different programmes.
• GRB does not necessarily have to cover every item of
expenditure and revenue, but it should not be confined to
social sectors
Types of GRB achievements
• Knowledge:
 improved indicators and statistics
• Procedures:
 improved budget decision-making , reporting and disbursement
• Expenditures:
 improved design to support gender equality
• Revenue:
 Improved design to support gender equality
• Fiscal stimulus/contraction
 Improved design to support gender equality
Knowledge: Improved Gender Indicators
and Statistics
• Australia: 14 gender equality indicators developed to link Women’s
Budget Statements to 5 yr National Agenda for Women Action Plans.
• Tanzania and Pakistan: conduct of national time use survey to enable
analysis of impact of public expenditure on unpaid work.
• Sweden: annex to budget, with gender disaggregated analysis.
Examples : Economic costs of parenthood , Financial situation of elderly.
• Norway : annex to budget, with gender disaggregated statistics on income,
employment, use of health services etc.
• Italy ( town in central Italy) : better information on beneficiaries of rent –
subsidies , showing they include not just unemployed and elderly ( as was
expected), but also divorced women with children.
Improved Budget Procedures
• Sweden : Introduction of gender sensitive performance indicators.
• France: Introduction of budget paper highlighting expenditures
earmarked to promote gender equality and address women’s needs.
• Scotland : Introduction of equalities impact statement.
• South Africa: Enhancing capacity of women parliamentarians to scrutinize
budget.
• Berlin, Basel, Scotland : women’s organizations and gender experts
contributing analysis of budgets.
• Austria , Belgium : Legislation to require gender responsive budgeting.
Improved Expenditures to Support
Gender Equality
• Australia: introduction of comprehensive paid parental leave, 2009/10.
• Sweden: Redesign of labour market programmes to help close gender gap
in entry into permanent jobs, 2007; town of Botkyra, funding for new
programmes to assist migrant women participate in labour market.
• Austria: at least 50% of funding for labour market programmes to be
reserved for women, 2006/7.
• Andalusia, Spain: new fund of 1 million Euros to support further
development of gender responsive budgeting, 2010.
• Netherlands: increased expenditure for social issues in two rural areas
( e.g programmes to address domestic violence).
Improved Gender Equality in Income Tax
UK: redesign of Working Tax Credit ( WTC)
WTC is an income transfer that tops up wages so as to make having a job
pay more than living on benefits. It is like a negative income tax and
administered through the UK tax authority.
It is assessed on a household, not individual basis.
UK Women’s Budget Group identified danger of fostering a ‘male
breadwinner’ household, and pressed government for change.
System was redesigned:
Child care subsidy element paid to main carer separately from other
elements in WTC
Supplement to WTC for having a full time earner modified so that ‘full
time’ hours can be split between a couple
Improved Gender Equality in Indirect
Taxes
• South Africa: exemption of paraffin from VAT
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In South Africa a selection of basic foodstuffs are zero-rated, including brown
bread, maize meal, dried beans, milk powder, rice, vegetables and fruit.
But some basic necessities were subject to VAT, including paraffin, which is used by
poor women for cooking, lighting and heating.
Women’s Budget Initiative highlighted that poor households paid a much bigger
share of their income in tax on paraffin than better-off households, since the
latter used very little paraffin.
It was calculated that the annual revenue loss to the government of zero-rating
paraffin would be R150 million in 1996.
The total raised from VAT in 1995/95 was R29,288.4 millions.
Exempting paraffin would be a well-targeted form of assistance to poor women
The government subsequently exempted paraffin fromVAT.
Supporting gender equality in fiscal
stimulus/ contraction
Andalusia, Spain , 2010 budget ( almost 34million
Euros)
• Total expenditure cut by 1.4 %
• Expenditure on Gender Equality Priority (G+)
programmes rose by 2.7%
• Share of G+ programmes in total expenditure rose
from 53.6% to 57.7%
• G+ classification introduced in 2007, based on input from
officials in all departments and from academic experts.