WUNRN
UN Women
Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and the fulfillment of women's rights. It entails identifying and reflecting needed interventions to address gender gaps in sector and local government policies, plans and budgets. GRB also aims to analyze the gender-differentiated impact of revenue-raising policies and the allocation of domestic resources and Official Development Assistance.
GRB/Gender Responsive Budgeting initiatives seek to create enabling policy frameworks, build capacity and strengthen monitoring mechanisms to support accountability to women. This website provides governments, non-governmental organizations, parliaments and academics with resources for understanding and applying GRB.
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GENDER BUDGETING RESPONSE FROM AFGHANISTAN
Dr. Massouda Jalal - Founder of Jalal Foundation, Pediatrician, & Former Minister of Women of Afghanistan
I think that women NGOs should fight for a gender budget policy as a means to sustain initiatives for women. You should do it as a single, distinct and separate agenda, rather than just embedded in this resolution. It should be a campaign that deserve the unity and coming together in full force of all supporters of women.
One way to do it is to
adopt a policy that will earmark 30 percent of all budgets for women and this
can be managed by the MOF/Minister Of Finance. Another option is to adopt a
policy that all donor assistance should earmark from 5 to 30 percent of its ODA
to women's projects. You can also think about a distinct funding mechanism for
women, like a "basket" to which all donors will contribute.
We all know that in
the Philippines, the General Appropriations Act has a special provision
allocating no less than five percent of all government agencies' budget to
gender, including the budget of local governments. The type of expenses that
could be charged to that 5 percent could be projects for women clientele and
for women inside the ministry. Every year, each agency submits a report on how
they spent the gender budget to the Commission on Women. The Commission
analyzes the report and make the results available to the Parliament who question
ministries about issues on how it is spent. It is effective because it keeps
the women's agenda alive in the work of government agencies.
For the local
governments, women NGOs could actually ask for funding for their projects. It
creates good relationship between women NGOs and local government units and
also keep the women's agenda alive.
There are hundreds of
countries with gender budgets. It
begins with a policy, then you can talk about the funds once
the policy is in place. A resolution could be a basis for the adoption of
a policy.