This year’s United Nations International Women’s Day theme of ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’ is focused on the steps needed to reduce the ‘$360 billion annual deficit in gender equality measures by 2023’.
Across the Pacific, work is being done by a number of governments and their development partners to strengthen public financial management. Australia is contributing to this work, including via the Australia-Pacific Partnerships Platform (the Partnerships Platform).
Today, we take a specific look at the role of gender-responsive budgeting to ensure policies and budgets address women’s disadvantage and promote gender equality.
But why is this important?
When evidence of gender gaps and the needs of different groups of women and girls is used to inform policies and budgets, resources can be deployed to address inequalities and support for women and girls. The benefits then extend to all of society.
Australia leads the way
Gender-responsive budgeting isn’t new to the Australian government. In fact, in many ways it started in the Australian Government when it introduced the first Women’s Budget Statement in back in 1984. The United Nation’s recognises this as the first key gender-responsive budgeting milestone globally, and more than 100 countries have since undertaken some form of gender-responsive budgeting, including several Pacific countries.
Fast-forward 40 years, and gender-responsive budgeting remains a policy focus for the Australian Government, including within its overseas development assistance program. The Partnerships Platform plays a role in identifying and supporting opportunities for gender-responsive budgeting in the Pacific region, with a view to working with our partner Pacific governments to devise and deliver national budgets that benefit everyone.
With public financial management specialists deployed in a number of Pacific countries, the Partnerships Platform Support Unit has a Gender-Responsive Budgeting Specialist on-hand to provide specific expertise and support. Our public financial management specialists are recruited at the request of Pacific governments seeking support as they devise and implement reforms.
The rationale for considering gender equality in public financial management reforms is strong, and includes:
- Exposing inequalities and closing gender gaps with significant and long-term positive effects on economic outcomes that are consistent with public financial management aims.
- Highlighting the contribution of unpaid work, disproportionately done by women, on the economy.
- Advancing policy and budget efficiency by recognising that the different economic and social circumstances of women and men contribute to different behaviour responses to policy.
- Promoting more effective and better evidence-based policies and budgets.
- Supporting performance-focused budgeting with attention on results, outputs and indicators. This provides a basis to better assess budget impacts.
- Ensuring that policies and budget decisions are aligned with community values of fairness and development priorities.
Gender-responsive budgeting and public financial management – an evolving story
The gender-responsive budgeting movement has gained global traction since the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action outlined an ambitious agenda for gender equality, while recognising that little would change if attention was not given to how fiscal policies and budgets impact on women and girls.
In 2016, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde tweeted that ‘gender-responsive budgeting is good budgeting’. This followed a large-scale IMF-led study of the international impact of gender-responsive budgeting which provided evidence that it influenced fiscal policies to address the needs of women and girls in areas such as education, health and infrastructure.
Gender budgeting is good budgeting: we can actively shape fiscal policy to achieve gender equality goals. #IMFGender pic.twitter.com/9Ki6uGvGCs— Christine Lagarde (@Lagarde) November 8, 2016
More recently, a supplementary module on gender-responsive budgeting has been included in the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) framework. The new module provides a measure of the degree to which the needs of different groups of men and women, and gender equality more broadly, are considered in public financial management systems. This module has been used in Fiji, Tonga and recently in Nauru, where the Partnerships Platform has public financial management specialists placed.
The COVID-19 pandemic reignited attention on gender-responsive budgeting as governments across the world recognised its disproportionate impacts on women. Vast resources were invested to tackle the pandemic’s economic and social impacts and support economic recovery.
In the Pacific, the pandemic prompted a resurgence of interest in budget systems as development partners turned to budget support as a means of responding to economic shocks and natural disasters. Budget support relies on principles such as transparency, accountability, performance, all of which can be improved with gender-responsive budgeting work.
Gender-responsive budgeting in practice
As with all policies and processes, context is critical and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to gender-responsive budgeting. The particular capacity, economic and governance characteristics of a country will shape the opportunities and challenges for gender-responsive budgeting to be actioned.
However, there are a range of options that can be considered, adapted and applied to ensure budgets are informed by, and respond to, the specific needs of women and girls, thereby benefiting everyone.
Lessons for sustainable, effective gender-responsive budgeting
Over the last 4 decades gender-responsive budgeting has continued its global reach. Among Australia’s neighbours there have been some notable successes, including:
- Fiji has made inroads to link gender equality and social inclusion to its budget processes with its Ministry of Finance leading the changes.
- Timor-Leste has, since 2008, worked to establish a comprehensive and institutionally-embedded gender-responsive budgeting initiative led by the Ministry of Finance, with support from the agency for gender equality and the oversight of parliament and women’s organisations.
- In Nauru, following the PEFA gender assessment in April 2022, the government has committed in the 2023-2024 budget to increase the focus on gender in the Public Financial Management Roadmap for the Department of Finance, creating the opportunity for gender-responsive budgeting. The Partnerships Platform continues to support these reforms via deployed financial management specialists and the Nauru-Australia Program on Economic Governance.
Investing in women accelerates progress
Here at the Partnerships Platform, the United Nations International Women’s Day theme is not a focus for one single day. We understand that investing in women accelerates progress, not just for women, but for everyone. Public financial management strengthening and reforms, and gender-responsive budgeting, are priorities for many Pacific countries. We will continue to draw from and build on Australia’s expertise in gender-responsive budgeting, as we build new knowledge and know-how alongside our many Pacific colleagues.
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About this blog
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References
Allen, R et al (2020) Review of the Public Financial Management Reform Strategy for Pacific Island Countries, 2010-2020, IMF Working Paper 20/183.
Costa, M, and Sharp, R (forthcoming). Getting started. In M. Costa and R. Sharp (Eds), Women Count Australia – A casebook for gender responsive budgeting.
PEFA Secretariat (2022) Public expenditure and financial accountability gender responsive budgeting assessment report, Government of Nauru and PEFA Secretariat.
Sharp, R and Elson, D (2007) Improving budgets: A framework for assessing gender responsive budget initiatives; Warner, B (2022) Gender and Budget Support in the Pacific.
Warner, B (2022) Gender and Budget Support in the Pacific.
Welham, B. et al (2018) Gender-responsive public expenditure management: A public finance management introductory guide, Overseas Development Institute, London. Birchall, J. and Fontana, M. (2015) The gender dimensions of expenditure and revenue policy and systems. Brighton, UK: BRIDGE.
