How does the allocation of public resources impact differently on men and women, and what can be done to address the resulting inequalities? This is one of the big questions that the Wales Women’s Budget Group has been set up to tackle, and that we are now addressing through our new programme of training.
Aimed at women’s organisations and the broader third sector, policy advisors and government officials, our first introductory workshop took place on 9 December 21. It explored what gender budgeting is and why it is needed, and how it can be used to influence budgetary decisions.
Gender budgeting is in essence a series of tools which examines how government taxation and spending affects women and men differently. It uses a combination of gender impact assessment, policy analysis, and gendered data to reveal the different outcomes for women and men from policy and finance decisions.
Gender budgeting is used to ensure that policies to tackle gender inequality are adequately funded. But more than that, it can change the way governments ‘do’ budgets, making them gender-responsive, thereby uncovering policies which were intended to be gender-neutral but are in practice causing unintentional inequality, and helping to reduce the risks of inequality in the future. And at its most powerful, gender budgeting can challenge the fundamentals of global systems by highlighting structural inequalities in national economies, such as bringing to light the realities of unpaid work and care.
The Wales Women’s Budget Group workshop was delivered by Alison Wride of EML Learning and former Head of Bangor Business School. Alison looked at the budget process in the UK and Wales, and the role of equality impacts tools. She also discussed the Budget Improvement Plan in Wales, which sets out the Welsh Government’s plans to develop gender budgeting here, initially with a series of pilot policies.
The session then focussed on what is involved in gender budgeting, which has three distinct elements – a gendered analysis of the budget, a restructuring of the budget based on the analysis and the mainstreaming of gender into the budget process itself.
We also discussed what is needed to ensure good gender budgeting can take place in Wales. Central to successful gender budgeting is gendered data – without data broken down by gender, comprehensive analysis of gendered impact is all but impossible. This needs to happen at the UK-wide and devolved nation level, and although the need for this data is widely recognised by governments, there is still some way to go in making sure it is collected.
Another element that is central to gender budgeting is the political will to see it through, with input from both government and civil society. Governments need to accept that there are short-term costs associated with gender budgeting, but it can lead to significant savings for nations in the long run, by ensuring an economy in which men and women are equally able to thrive.
A follow-up session early in 2022 will take a more detailed look at the principles and practicalities of gender budgeting, focussing on specific tools and real-life examples to see how to apply them.
Interested in coming along? Contact us here