Gender Budgeting

Officials developing government budgets often assume that taxing and spending decisions will be gender neutral, unless it is a matter of a designated ‘women’s program’. This overlooks the different roles played by men and women in the social division of labour, both paid and unpaid, that result in purportedly neutral policies having quite disparate effects. For example, ‘austerity budgets’ will usually have a disproportionate impact on women. Feminist economists argued for a ‘gender lens’ on budget development to identify such inadvertent effects that may widen inequalities. A gender budgeting movement underpinned by this work gained momentum internationally during the 1990s. Over half of OECD countries have adopted some form of it and it is increasingly being applied to support pro-poor and equality goals in developing countries.