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SANA'A, YEMEN, Jan. 3,
2009 — A survey on the extent and understanding of gender-responsive
budgeting among governmental, non-governmental, and international
organizations revealed that only 33 percent of the surveyed sample had taken
gender into consideration while drawing up their budgets.
Dr. Abdulqadir Al-Banna a researcher with the Strategic Development Center
surveyed 31 government organizations, 17 non-government, and 14 international
organizations whose work is related to gender issues and women's development.
"Some of the interviewed people claim to integrate gender in their
budgets, while in fact they do nothing more than allocate finances for women
related projects," he said.
The Women National Committee, whose advocacy work for women's development in
Yemen included this survey, and which was an Oxfam-GB Yemen Program Good
Governance project funded by the Netherlands, hosted a seminar on Sunday to
discuss the survey's findings.
"Gender responsive budgets are simply budgets created while keeping in
mind that women exist, and represent at least 50 percent of the beneficiaries
of those budgets," said Houria Mashour, Deputy Chairperson of the WNC at
the seminar.
According to indicators from the survey, the masterminds behind national
budgets, and even organizational budgets, create them in such a way as to
target only men, with women's interest coming as an afterthought. Examples of
gender-insensitive budgets are those where funds are allocated for building
girls’ schools adjacent to boys' schools.
Because Yemen is a conservative society, parents would rather not enroll
their daughters in schools where a large male population is present nearby.
Therefore, gender-responsive budgeting is an effective way to evaluate how
committed governmental, and non-governmental, establishments are to
addressing women's needs, which is the state's general approach.
"The idea is a redistribution of spending which does not necessarily
require an increase in budgets, or require additional financial support to be
made available for women's issues, in such a way as to suggest that they fall
outside the national budgeting picture," said Al-Banna.
Continuous Efforts
The Women National Committee has worked on integrating gender consideration
into the principle development projects in cooperation with development
partners in Yemen.
These efforts aim to progress the implementation of the national strategy for
women and gender development's two phases (2003-2005, and 2006-1010).
"A need to have gender responsive budgets appeared as a necessity and a
solution to many of the obstacles standing in the way of integrating women's
issues into existing development plans, in order to direct resources to both
women and men's needs simultaneously," said Tahani Al-Khaiba, Gender
Officer of Oxfam's Good Governance project in Yemen.
This trend received significant support from some of the donors such as
Oxfam-GB Yemen's program which we could say was one of the early starters, if
not the first international organization that took interest in this issue and
supported the promotion of gender-responsive budgeting in Yemen.
In 2003, Oxfam adopted a number of projects paving the way for serious
demands to be made regarding integration of gender into the national
budgeting strategy.
Findings
Government organizations’ surveys show an inkling of support for gender
integration in planning and budgeting, due largely to the creation of women's
departments in all the ministries, even if the actual role of these
departments is quite unclear.
Many officials have indicated that are several projects for targeting women's
development currently in the pipeline, however, in reality around 55 percent
of women related projects did not receive the financial support that was
originally pledged, and were not prioritized in the various governmental
plans.
On the other, surveys of the non-government organizations show an improvement
in gender integration when compared to government organizations, as many NGOs
have been seen to support and interact with gender issues in a bid to close
the gender gap. Indeed, over 70 percent of the surveyed NGOs had a dedicated
officer for gender and women's issues.
Results from surveying international organizations show that they provide
continuous support for women's projects and gender related development
programs, with 92 percent of such organizations confirming their support for
developing women in Yemen, often using their influence to exert pressure and
push for gender-responsive policy-making.
Moreover, 50 percent of those organizations provide conditional grants and
support to the government, such as fair distribution of resources among
beneficiaries from both genders, and so on.
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