Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha
(BNPS)
Training Course
6-9 August
2007, Dhaka
` Gender Budgeting: A framework for Women Empowerment and social accountability`
1 . Background and Rationale
In a society where women and men have different roles and positions, there is no gender-neutral perspective. The seemingly “general” view is a very male one. Women and their life-situations, their needs and interests are often not recognized sufficiently, whereby the discrimination of women is reinforced. Therefore gender mainstreaming integrates a gender-sensitive perspective in all areas. This means, that different situations and conditions of women and men are always considered consciously and all projects are designed in a way, so that they contribute to the fostering of equality. Real equal opportunity can therefore only exist when the actual equality of women and men is achieved in all social areas. - thus when for example women and men are equally present in policy and in implementation level.
Budgets are universally accepted as a powerful policy tool in achieving development objectives and act as an indicator of commitment to the stated policy of the Government. National budgets reflect how governments mobilize and allocate public resources, and how they aim to meet the social and economic needs of their people. It is also true for local government budget as well as very much relevant with NGO budget.
The budgetary policy of the Government or any other Institution has a major role to play in achieving objectives of gender equality and growth through content and direction of Economic and Monetary Policies, measures for resource mobilization, affirmative action for under privileged sections etc. Women stand apart as one segment of the population that warrants special attention due to their vulnerability and lack of access to state resources. Thus gender responsive budgets policies can contribute to achieving the objectives of gender equality, human development and economic efficiency.
Gender budgeting is an exercise to translate stated gender commitments of the Government or an organization into budgetary commitments, entailing positive action for empowering women and examination of the utilization of resources allocated for women and how it impacts on women and men, girls and boys of different social and economic (and racial ) groups. It is a tool to enable gender analysis of budgets. Since a budget reflects a government’s macro-economic policy priorities, gender budgeting can also be used as a tool for gender analyzing of macro-economic policy. In fact, gender budget initiatives have an objective of challenging the assumption that macro-economic policies are gender-neutral by analyzing and exposing their gendered impacts.
The rationale of gender budgeting arises from recognition of the fact that national or institutional budgets impact various sections of the society differently through the pattern of resource allocation and priority accorded to competing sectors. The purpose of gender budgeting exercise is to assess quantum and adequacy of allocation of resources for women and establish the extent to which Gender commitments are translated in to budgetary commitments. This exercise facilitates increase in accountability, transparency and participation of the community. The macro policies of the Government can have a significant impact on gender gaps in various macro indicators related to health, education, income, etc. Gender mainstreaming requires gender responsive policy. When gender equality considerations are incorporated into policy making, the concerns and needs of both women and men become integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all sections of society. Gender Budgeting indicating that the end objective is empowerment of women. Despite decades of planning important macro indicator still adverse for women. In such a scenario, Gender Budgeting emerges as a powerful tool for Empowerment of Women. It is a means to ensure adequate focus on resource allocation for women and to track utilization of public funds and implementation of programmes. The best of intentions and commitments requires dedication of funds and efforts. Gender Budgeting addresses both. Gender Budgeting helps to bring in greater transparency and accountability in the development initiatives and processes. The need for gender sensitivity is not only in allocation of resources but also delivery of services and resource management. Through emphasizing this, there is also need of NGOS taking up Gender Budgeting initiatives in view of their dominant contribution in allocation of resources for women and critical role in implementation of all major public expenditure programmes. NGOs should take ownership of this initiative and wield it as a weapon against all barriers to Women’s Empowerment!
The perspective on gender budgeting
has greatly evolved over the last few
years and has gained
prominence in recent years, and was given additional impetus by the
Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, which called
for ensuring the integration of a gender perspective in budgetary
policies and programs.
In
Bangladesh, BNPS is the pioneer who takes the issue of analyzing the
national budget with gender perspectives. BNPS have undertaken this
issue as a critical one because of budget is the most important
government political decision, since it assumes allocation and
reallocation of the resources. Budgets are instruments for allocation of
resources according to social priorities. Therefore budgets should
follow the principles of efficiency and equity. Budget policy could
follow patriarchal values of the society or it could make attempts to
transform them towards the gender equality. During the last couple of
years, BNPS has conducted a number of studies on gender budgeting (2000,
2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006; involving BIDS/MOWCA) through analyzing
the gender sensitivity of the annual national budget of Bangladesh in
order to evaluate its role in empowering women. Main thrust of all these
studies were to find out women’s share in the national budget and to
assess the nature of ADPs undertaken for women development. However,
Women’s empowerment not only depends on the amount of allocation in
annual budget for women and the nature of the development projects, but
also on the efficiency of using budgetary allocation. It has been
observed from the previous studies that women’s share in the national
budget is not only meager(around 3%), also it is not spent totally or
even efficiently. In each and every year, certain amount of allocated
fund remains unused and this amount varies from 10 to 25 per cent of
revised budget, the percent is much higher in relation to original
budget. It also requires finding out the factors affecting the
utilization of budgetary allocation earmarked for women’s development.
It is also essential to identify the problems women faced with this
process and to investigate what policy, project, budgetary measures are
necessary to solve these problems.
BNPS also realized that the range of Gender Budget Analysis should
equally be perceived as a mandate to examine from gender perspective
not only for government national budget but also in NGO sector. In
this perspective BNPS propose to introduce the practice of Gender
budgeting in NGO sector so that they use it as a strategy for improving
their gender sensitivity and efficiency in the field of their
development efforts.
Considering the experiences gathered by BNPS on Gender budgeting over
last couple of years, it has been also realized that it is necessary to
make gender budgeting as a national wave involving different NGOs and
civil society activist. In order to achieve this,
it is very important to increase awareness and knowledge
of the policy makers, especially who are directly involved in the budget
making process, academia, media personnel and civil society.In
this context, BNPS is planning to organize a training course for the
senior and mid level NGO activist, media people and other relevant
interested govt. sector people to make them aware and sensitize on the
issue.
2. Course outline (Tentative):
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Closing |
3. Objectives of the Training
Participants will be
a. aware and sensitized on the gender budgeting concept and its importance for women empowerment
b. aware on how effective is gender budgeting as a tool for women’s empowerment, in its present form, in the Bangladesh context
c. get acquainted with tools and techniques for gender budgeting
d.
Find out the strategies actions and recommendation to divert
budgetary resources towards women in a most effective way
4. Training Participants
25 selected participants from NGO sector of Bangladesh preferably the partners of EED and electronic/print media and from government sector.
5. Venue
The training will be organised at Dhaka having all modern facilities.
6. Methodology
Different participatory training and facilitation methods and techniques will be followed in implementing the training course. The discussion and facilitation will have excellent mix of theory, practice and exercise. Case studies, experience sharing and views sharing from GO-NGO side will also be a part of the training.
7. Facilitators
Renowned national and foreign experts from Jagori-India, BIDS, Shamunnay, BNPS and expert facilitators on the subject matter will facilitate the course.
8. Time-line of the Training
Based on the types of works, in total 3 months have been estimated (May 2007-July 2007) including the preparatory and organizational activities. Considering the budget declaration time of the government, the implementation of training will be in last week of June or First of July 2007. the actual training days would be 4 days
9. Logistic arrangement
BNPS will provide the traveling, accommodation, training materials, food in a modest way. Honorarium will be provided for all facilitators where as the facilitator from abroad (India) will get her/his air fare related cost in addition. It is expected EED-Germany will provide the financial assistance in this regard.
