What is Gender Budgeting?

Gender budgeting has been described as ‘good budgeting’. It means applying gender analysis to how governments raise and spend money. 

It is a way of critically reviewing how spending decisions affect the economic and social opportunities of women and men, and it looks to restructure spending decisions to eliminate unequal outcomes. 

Gender budgeting is essentially a suite of tools that enable governments to examine how budgetary decisions and allocations affect women and men, provide understanding of the context in which different impacts arise and bring together the evidence to make different decisions to eliminate unequal outcomes. 

Gender budgeting tools can be applied throughout the budget process, and at any level, be it UK Government, Welsh Government or local government. Anyone who is making decisions about how to spend public money can use gender budgeting to make better spending decisions. 

Gender budgeting can help provide a forward look towards potential impacts, and shape decisions accordingly. It can also support reflection on previous budgets and spending decisions to ensure impact is measured, lessons are learnt and fairer decisions can be made in the future. 

Gender budgeting is used in many countries already, and has been a recommendation from women’s organisations for many years. 

Since 2019, work has begun in Wales by the Welsh Government to pilot gender budgeting with a view to implementing across all departments in the future. 

Why does gender budgeting matter?

Gender budgeting matters because we live in a gendered world; gender still affects many aspects of our lives, and women still face inequality. 

Women are still less likely to be in work, more likely to be working part-time and are under-represented in certain sectors. This segregation in our labour market contributes to income inequality and a gender pay gap of 12% in Wales.  

Women also more commonly take on unpaid work and caring responsibilities. This further affects their ability to engage in the formal, paid economy as well as putting additional mental and emotional pressure on them. 

For women who also share other protected characteristics – ethnic minority women, disabled women, LGBTQ+ women – the inequality is even greater, and discrimination remains a common feature of their day-to-day lives. 

All of this means that decisions taken by government, including decisions about what to spend money on, affect women differently. If we fail to take account of these differences when making decisions we risk recreating and reinforcing inequality rather than making progress towards a more equal and fairer Wales. 

Gender budgeting offers the tools needed to understand these gender differences and make different, fairer decisions.

Gender Budgeting Tools

Gender budgeting can involve the application of a number of tools, all aimed at applying a gender lens to policy and spending decisions to deliver more targeted spending, provide clearer formulation of policy and resources aimed at diverse needs and secure more equitable outcomes.

There are a number of different tools that can be used as part of gender budgeting. Here we summarise some of the main ones. 

Gender-aware policy appraisals

The most commonly used tool, this involves 5 steps
1. Analysis of the situation for different people

2. Assessment of the extent to which policy addresses the gendered situation identified in step one

3. Assessment of how adequate budget allocations are to implement gender responsive policy

4. Monitoring of whether money was spent as planned

5. Assessment of whether policy as implemented changed the situation and improved gender equality

Gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessment

Considers how effective service delivery is, from a gender perspective
Gathers the views of potential beneficiaries of a service, on whether the service is meeting their needs. Asks both women and men beneficiaries and asks about gender related issues. Can use different methods to gather views, be done at varying scales and be used by government or civil society.

Gender-disaggregated public expenditure analysis

Considers the distribution of spend between women and men
Measures the unit cost of providing a service, then multiplies this by the number of units delivered to men and women.

Gender-disaggregated tax incidence analysis

Considers who is contributing to the amount of tax collected, by gender
Considers how progressive the tax system is, and where possible examines how much tax is paid by women and others. Can also consider whether the tax system reinforces or shifts traditional gender roles. Can be used to look at the whole tax system or just parts of it.

Gender-disaggregated analysis of the impact of the budget on time use

Considers how budget allocations affect time use
Assesses the effectiveness of service delivery, focused on the impact of budget allocations on how household members use their time. E.g. looks at how childcare services impacts on people staying at home and not earning income in order to provide care, disaggregated by gender. Can be done by government or civil society.

Gender-aware medium-term economic framework

An economic strategy based on gender analysis
Such a framework would be based on gender analysis and include economic documents (strategies, plans etc.) that demonstrate an understanding of gender issues and commit to action aimed at tackling gender inequality. It could include ‘gender variables’ in economic models, and targets and indicators directly related to tackling inequality.

Gender-aware budget statement

A document that outlines the implications of public spending for women and gender equality
Often the result of the application of other gender budgeting tools, a gender-aware budget statement can act as evidence of the extent to which government have used gender analysis as part of the budget process. Ultimately this is a tool of accountability, that can support civil society and parliaments to scrutinise budget proposals, and act as evidence for governments that are required to demonstrate application of gender budgeting.
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