Strengthening Accountability for Gender Equality

1. Strengthening accountability for gender equalityTo learn more visit www.gender-budgets.org

2. WHAT IS GRB? • Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is about including a gender perspective in government planning, budgeting and performance monitoring with a view to achieve gender equality and realize women’s rights • GRB seeks to ensure that governments from developed or developing countries raise revenue and allocate and spend public resources in a way that addresses disadvantage, exclusion and inequalities.

3. WHY IS GRB IMPORTANT? • There is a lack of implementation of gender equality commitments as laid out in policy documents at national, regional and global levels • GRB acknowledges the intersection between budget policies and women’s well being and allows us to challenge the gender blindness/neutrality of macroeconomic policies (fiscal policy, aid policy, debt etc)

4. UN Women’s work on GRB • Bridges the disconnect between national development strategies and priorities identified in national gender equality plans • Strengthens capacity of public institutions to formulate plans and budgets with a gender lens • Encourages transparent and adequate financing for gender equality • Enhances leadership and influence of gender equality advocates in policy, planning and budgeting processes.

5. The approach: from policies to results, identifying entry points for GRB in the budget cycle

6. WHAT ARE KEY STRATEGIES USED IN GRB? • Policy advocacy • Programming • Capacity development • Research and analysis (to build knowledge and evidence base) • Partnership building and networking

7. WHO ARE THE ACTORS OF GRB WORK? • Governments: Finance Ministries, sector ministries, local governments, donors • Parliament • Auditor general office • Civil Society • Academia / research institutes

8. ENTRY POINTS FOR PARLIAMENT • Championing amendments to budget laws • Using budget oversight role to ensure that budgets adequately reflect the priorities and needs of women and men • Raising gender issues during budget discussion • Monitoring budget from a gender perspective • Creating spaces for dialogue with women’s groups during budget formulation and budget approval phases

9. CHALLENGES OF GRB WORK • Sustainability of GRB initiatives: lack of political will, lack of coherence between aid, debt and trade policies, competing government agendas and priorities • Capacity (weak capacity for analyzing and engaging with economic policies, sector policies, aid discussions, for applying GRB tools such as costing and tracking). • Small scale of GRB initiatives; and bringing all actors together and not leaving it to only one actor • Complexity: difficult to expand and difficult to apply to all sectors so need to focus on priority areas for women • Data and evidence

10. Highlights of results of GRB work • Increased capacity and commitment of Ministries of Finance to apply GRB • Budget guidelines and formats revised to facilitate gender responsiveness • Sector ministries increasingly incorporate a gender perspective in their plans and budgets • Effective role of civil society and national women’s machineries in monitoring spending towards women’s priorities • Increased resources allocations towards women’s priorities (Morocco, Ecuador, Rwanda etc) • Policy influencing at global level: Busan