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Making Public Expenditures Equitable: Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting

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Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace ((BRIEFSSECUR,volume 22))

Abstract

Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) arose from the women’s movement while participatory budgeting (PB) erupted from progressive circles, including the workers’, slum dwellers’ and peasants’ movements. After about 30 years of practice, both GRB and PB are now at important junctures in their development. There have been few attempts to interlink or integrate the two approaches. The chapters in this book attempt to look at common denominators of successful GRB and PB outcomes, as well as challenges, taking into consideration the various national and local contexts. Three main themes emerge viz. the ‘hybridization ’ of GRB and PB; the implementation of GRB tools for gender equality and social justice; and the institutionalization of GRB and/or PB for better accountability and good governance.

Cecilia Ng, Independent Researcher and Board Member, Penang Women’s Development Corporation, Penang, Malaysia. Email: cncs77@gmail.com.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Allegretti (this volume) for data regarding PB, and Hattam (2012) for statistics on GRB. UN Women appears to be in the forefront of GRB, supporting such initiatives in 55 countries. Within the Asian region, other international stakeholders include the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Asia Foundation.

  2. 2.

    The institutional bases for participation for the UK and the South African Women’s Budget initiative were very different from those of Australia. Nongovernmental organizations, researchers and academics provided the assessment of gender impacts in the UK and South Africa, rather than the bureaucracy. Over in Asia, the Philippines Gender and Development (GAD) Budget Policy, initiated in 1995, mandated that all government agencies set aside at least 5 % of their total budget for gender and development (Illo 2010). I would like to thank Rhonda Sharp for her inputs into this part of the introduction.

  3. 3.

    The section on PB relies on the research and incisive writings of Allegretti (2014), Sintomer et al. (2008, 2013a, b).

  4. 4.

    See UNIFEM (2000: 116) for an elaboration of the three-way categorization espoused by Rhonda Sharp, which divides expenditure into gender-targeted, equal opportunity for civil servants and mainstream expenditure. Of late Banerjee has proposed three categories on public schemes which comprise relief policies, gender reinforcing assistance and empowering schemes (Mishra/Sinha 2012). Another well-known tool is the five steps towards a gender sensitive budget, the latter of which was developed by Debbie Budlender together with the South African Women’s Budget Initiative and Gender and Education and Training Network (Quinn 2009).

  5. 5.

    See the draft concept note and discussions in the UN Women Asia Pacific Consultation on “Making Budgets Accountable to Women”, 30 September–1 October, 2014 held in Bali, Indonesia.

  6. 6.

    The example from Malaysia is illustrative. A pilot on GRB comprising five ministries began in 2003 with the support of UNDP. However, since then there has been little follow up. Through the years, various Treasury Call Circulars have obliged government agencies to implement GRB through a gender and social analysis (via sex-disaggregated data for example) of their respective programmes. To date, there has been no report of such obligatory analysis.

  7. 7.

    Satriyo (2014) refers to the sometimes overlapping, inconsistent and poorly implemented laws and regulations of the GRB policy environment in which women’s and civil society groups operate.

  8. 8.

    See Rai (2000) and the chapter entitled “An Unholy Alliance? Women Engaging with the State” in: Ng et al. (2006) on the uneasy relations between state and civil society, especially the women’s movement.

  9. 9.

    It has been noted that the UK Women’s Budget Group focused originally on taxation and state transfer of funds. Uncovering the gender bias of austerity policies has become a focus in the context of the economic crisis (Klatzer et al. 2011; Grown 2005). The relationship between the care economy and budgets has been brought up since the 1990s (see Elson 1996).

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  1. Penang Women’s Development Corporation, Penang, Malaysia

    Cecilia Ng

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  1. Penang Women's Development Corporat, Penang, Malaysia

    Cecilia Ng

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Ng, C. (2016). Making Public Expenditures Equitable: Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting. In: Ng, C. (eds) Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24496-9_1

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