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Engendering national budgets in southern Africa - more work still needed
Barbara Lopi and Priscilla Mng’anya, Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA)
Extracted from GAD Exchange Issue 33
July 05, 2004

http://www.sardc.net/Widsaa/Gad/Iss33/engender.htm

...most national budgeting processes do not assess the gender distribution of public spending, revenues, services, outputs and impacts on men and women...

Alot of work and sensitisation needs to be done in many countries in southern Africa to ensure that they produce and implement national budgets that are gender sensitive.

In its 1997 Declaration on Gender and Development, Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states made a commitment to ensure that gender is routinely taken into account in all sectors.

National budgets world-wide are often assumed to affect everyone more or less equally, and have been instrumental in perpetrating and reproducing gender biases, yet they also hold the possibility for transforming existing gender inequalities.

Because of the different social roles and responsibilities attached to women and men, national budgets have significantly different impacts on women and men. Engendering budgets, a process of budgeting that analyses national budgets including public expenditure, or method of raising public money, from a gender perspective, remains an essential component in transforming existing gender inequalities.

The process of engendering budgets identifies the implications and impacts of the budgets on women and girls as compared to men and boys, and aims to highlight the gap between policy statements and the resources committed to their implementation, including to ensure that public money is spent in more gender equitable ways.

In southern Africa, only a few countries, (South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe) have made notable progress in engendering budgets and budgetary processes. In the rest of the countries in the region much still needs to be done, as their budgetary processes face a number of challenges.

For instance, most national budgeting processes do not assess the gender distribution of public spending, revenues, services, outputs and impacts on men and women and as a result the majority of women and poor people’s needs and priorities are inadequately catered for. Ongoing research by the gender programme of the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) reveals that national budgets in most of the countries in the region do not analyse budgetary allocations on who benefits, how spending and revenue distributed, the implication in the short and long term for the gender distribution of resources including paid and unpaid work, and whether the provisions are adequate for the needs of women and men.

In collaboration with national partners in seven SADC countries (Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe), the SARDC gender programme is compiling national gender profiles which present information on progress made towards promotion of gender equality and equity since 1998.

To be able to effectively produce and implement gender sensitive national budgets, governments need to have statistics disaggregated by sex, and to be sensitive to gender segregation, cultural practices and gender norms.

The lack of gender-disaggregated data, and unavailability of trained personnel including inadequate accountability and transparency by most legislatures in developing and implementing budgets are among the key challenges that southern African countries face in the quest to realise gender sensitive budgets.

Government and all stakeholders in budget preparations needs to be aware of the scope of gender issues and should be empowered with the skills to be able to search for more hidden aspects of gender inequality. Cooperation across government agencies, civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and across the policy process is also a key component to realizing a gender sensitive budget.

Regular discussions and consultation between the state and civil society partners throughout the national budgetary planning cycle has proved to be an effective strategy to realise gender sensitive budgets in countries such as South Africa and Tanzania. The consultations increased participation in the budget process by citizens, particularly women.

In Tanzania for instance, the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP), has been pioneering a Gender Budget Initiative (GBI) since mid-1997 in collaboration with the Feminist Activism Coalition (FemAct). The GBI in Tanzania has transformed planning and budgetary processes to take into account the practical and strategic needs of marginalized communities, particularly women, poor men, and youths.

The coalition and TGNP have gained access into government structures and strategic decision-making bodies and are invited by government and donors to be a part of the Public Expenditure Review (PER) process and the Tanzania Assistance Strategy (TAS) processes.

As a result, two paragraphs on gender were included in the 2000-01 budget, which mandated that all Ministry, Department and Agency (MDA) budget submissions be prepared with a gender focus. A paragraph on gender was also included in the 1999-2000 budget guidelines.

The Ministry of Finance in partnership with Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) further commissioned TGNP to facilitate a project to mainstream gender in six sectors of the budget namely: Health; Education; Agriculture; Water; Ministry for Community Development, Women Affairs and Children; and Regional Administration and Local Government.

In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) and Women’s Action Group (WAG) with assistance from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) are spearheading campaigns to ensure that gender concerns are considered in the budgeting processes.

Last year, the two NGOs convened a dialogue between civil society organisations and high-ranking decision-makers including parliamentarians, where the importance of engendering the national budget was discussed. The meeting also highlighted shortcomings in the 2004 national budget from a gender perspective.

Efforts to engender budgets are also unfolding in Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia, albeit at a very slow pace.

The processes to engender budgets must be initiated in all countries in the region because gender budgeting initiatives can significantly contribute to reshaping policy goals and overall objectives like equity, equality, efficiency, transparency and good governance.

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