Gender budgeting in the Welsh context presents a new opportunity to combat gender inequality. Here’s how Wales began taking it seriously.
On International Women’s Day in March 2018, First Minister Carwyn Jones committed to making the Welsh Government a feminist government. He also announced his intention to make Wales a leader in gender equality, and the safest place to be a woman in the whole of Europe.[1]
To achieve these ambitious goals, the Welsh Government commissioned Chwarae Teg, former leading gender equality charity in Wales, to conduct a review of gender equality in Wales. The Gender Equality Review took place in two phases, with the first report, ‘Rapid Review of Gender Equality,’[2] being published in June 2018 and followed by the second ‘Deeds Not Words: Review of Gender Equality in Wales,’[3] in June 2019.
The Review concluded that achieving the First Minister’s vision for gender equality would require a radical process of organisational change to ensure that equalities are properly embedded into the work of government. This behavioral shift is known as gender mainstreaming. It involves systematically integrating gender equality considerations into all government decision-making, core processes and ways of working.
Gender budgeting is the application of gender mainstreaming in the budget process. It means undertaking an intersectional gender-based assessment of spending decisions and restructuring those decisions to eliminate any unequal gendered impacts. By mainstreaming gender considerations into a large, cross-governmental core process (the Budget) and by allocating the resources necessary to mobilise policies that advance gender equality, gender budgeting activates gender mainstreaming. The development and implementation of a Welsh gender budgeting approach was therefore a key recommendation of the Deeds Not Words report.
Following its publication, the Welsh Government formally accepted all of the recommendations of the Deeds Not Words report, including the commitment to roll out gender budgeting in Wales. Plans to implement these recommendations were laid out in the Advancing Gender Equality in Wales Plan, published in March 2020[4]. As part of its commitment to roll out gender budgeting in Wales, the Welsh Government commissioned three gender budgeting pilots in different policy portfolios[5]. These included the Personal Learning Accounts (2019-21) pilot, followed by Young Person’s Guarantee and E-Move pilots (2022-23).
[1] ‘Ugly backlash’ when women speak out, says First Minister | ITV News Wales
[2] Chwarae Teg (2018), Rapid Review of Gender Equality in Wales
[3] Chwarae Teg (2019), Deeds Not Words: Review of Gender Equality in Wales
[4] advancing-gender-equality-plan.pdf
[5] Evolving approach to gender budgeting in Wales | GOV.WALES