What is Gender Budgeting and Why Do We Need It?
Gender budgeting is a public finance tool used to advance gender equality.
It involves analysing government spending decisions from a gendered and intersectional perspective, assessing how those decisions – and the policies they fund – impact different groups of women and men. This analysis allows policymakers to identify and prioritise measures with positive outcomes for gender equality, and to restructure decisions which might otherwise perpetuate or widen gender gaps.
“Gender budgeting mobilises policymaking to close gender gaps and advance gender equality.”
Gender budgeting matters because we live in a gendered world; gender still affects many aspects of our lives, and different groups of women still face inequality and disadvantage in several areas.
In Wales, women are three times more likely to be working part-time than men[1]. They are also less likely to be in work, and 3.5 times more likely than men to be economically inactive due to caring responsibilities.[2] Women are also overrepresented in lower-paid, precarious employment sectors such as retail, accommodation and social care. This segregation in our labour market contributes to income inequality and a gender pay gap of 11.8% in Wales.[3]
The unequal economic position of women means that they earn less than men over their lifetimes and are thus more vulnerable to falling into poverty. For women who also share other protected characteristics – ethnic minority women, disabled women, LGBTQ+ women – the inequality is even starker, and discrimination remains a common feature of their day-to-day lives.
Persistent gender inequalities mean that women have different needs and priorities when it comes to public spending decisions. For example, their unequal economic position means that women are more reliant – and more likely to work within – public services and more likely to be in receipt of social security benefits than men. If we fail to take account of these different needs when making decisions, we risk recreating and reinforcing inequality rather than making progress towards a more equal and fairer Wales.
In requiring decisionmakers to respond to the needs of different groups, gender budgeting offers the tools necessary to understand these gender differences and make different, fairer decisions.
The social advantages of gender budgeting and its ability to tackle gender inequality are well established. What is less understood is that as a tool, gender budgeting also brings strong economic and fiscal gains.[4] By closing gender employment gaps and enabling women’s participation in the workforce, gender budgeting increases productivity and income. This brings additional tax revenue and social security contributions, as well as reducing demand for welfare benefits. Taken together, these impacts drive economic growth and improve fiscal sustainability.[5] Gender budgeting is therefore a particularly useful tool in the context of tight budgetary contexts, and in countries where aging populations result in shrinking workforces, such as Wales.
Gender budgeting is sometimes misunderstood as separate or ‘special’ budgets for women. It is important to emphasise that this is not the case, and that gender budgeting does not focus only on spending aimed at women. Rather, gender budgeting is an analysis of how all areas of spending impact differently on women and men; it is about targeting the finite resources available to the different needs of women and men. This targeted spending leads to a clearer formulation of policies and the allocation of resources which actually meets to the diverse needs of the population, beginning with the most disadvantaged. Gender budgeting therefore prevents losses from policy failure due to unexpected gendered impacts and provides for more effective use of public money.
In Wales specifically, gender budgeting strongly aligns with the wider wellbeing agenda encompassed by the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act 2015[6]. By tackling inequality and contributing to economic growth, gender budgeting can expediate progress towards the wellbeing goals of A Prosperous Wales and A More Equal Wales.
[1] WEN Wales (2024), State of the Nation 2024
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] OECD (2022), Gender budgeting: The economic and fiscal rationale
[5] Ibid.
[6] Wellbeing of Future Generations Act 2015
