The term 'gender responsive budgeting' (GRB) generally refers to initiatives that monitor and asssess the impact of government revenue and expenditure between men and women, boys and girls. It is commonly known by various terms like, gender friendly budgets, women's budgets, gender budgeting, gender sensitive budgets to name a few. However, in this forum, gender responsive budgeting (GRB) would be used.
The benefits of achieving gender responsive budgeting are many which include:
- providing information that allows for better policy decision making on how policy priorities can be altered and how resources could be redistributed towards achieving gender equality (for advocacy).
- improvement of economic governance and financial administration. That is, can inform government constantly of whether it is meeting its citizens' needs particularly among men and women, boys and girls. From those outside of government, GRB can be used to promote transparency, accountability and participation.
However, it is important to understand that GRB initiatives do not seek to create separate budgets for women.
GRB is about ensuring that public money is allocated in an equitable manner so that those with pressing needs benefit fairly. In other words, it is about limited resources being redistributed so that marginalised groups could benefit equally.
Bangladesh has initiated activities surrounding this concept which provides a good background of what GRB is. UNIFEM, one of the arms of the United Nations that promotes gender equality also has been working on this agenda for quite awhile.
The 'International Open Budget Initiative' also promotes the agenda internationally in partnership with non government organisations (NGOs) around the world, esp. in third world countries under the 'Open Budgeting' Concept. It encourages these NGOs to monitor and evaluate the budget performances of their governments.
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2 May 2010
Hello again friends!!
As I had mentioned in my brief Project Proposal and Plan, I have been consulting with organisations in Brisbane in order to obtain information on how the initiative is developed and implemented. Australia, being the first country to introduce the concept in its federal budgetary and policy processes in 1984, it is widely institutionalised at all levels and sectors - that is, mainly government and civil society levels and sectors. The response from the organisations is highly commendable as they were very helpful with the information I sought.
However, the response from the PNG community has been very limited due to many reasons, of which some are identified and mentioned in the Project Proposal and Plan. On the whole, it was a good exercise. A detailed information on how and what information was obtained, their usefulness, and the experiences of undertaking such an initiative will be posted later in a couple of days time. Thanks for spending time reading this and also appreciate your contributions.
Thanks
Wallis
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25 May 2010
Success stories of community action to promote GRB
Hi again,
You maybe wondering why there are so many pictures and video bars in this page. Well, let me take you through each one of them. Work on the Gender Responsive Budgeting(GRB) has expanded all over the world tremendously as more and more people realise the immense benefits it brings into the lives of so many ordinary folks, especially those that are marginalised, like women, children or even rural people in third world countries. For instance,video bar 1 brings you all the successful stories of women who have never given up hope in advocating for local government budgets to recognise the needs of women in India, similar stories are also told in Bolivia, Morocco and elsewhere.
These testimonies reflect that community action based on the needs of the locality is the foundation for effectively achieving community development and to promote improved livelihood for people. But the other side of the coin is that decision makers have to also be responsive to the calls from their local citizens. Some initiatives can be realised by mobilising local social capital such as environment sustainability initiatives.
However, the goals and objectives of GRB can to a larger extent be achieved through making decision makers take ownership of the initiative and a constant push from a civil society sector that is vibrant for this to be recognised. It needs to be an equal effort on both sides. I would therefore encourage you to watch the individual success stories of the video clips if this is an area of interest for those of you who are reading this.
The Video Bar 2 takes you through another life experience altogether where communities and a number of international partners (donors + churches) through mobilising, encouraging community participation and innovation address local needs like accessing clean water and adult literacy. As is reflected, the absence of government support is quite obvious.
Hence, the success stories of others overcoming barriers to achieve equal redistribution of resources based on citizens' needs is a significant motivational factor for others like those in PNG to undertake similar steps. GRB is seen to be addressing existing inequities in the allocation of public resources at different levels of government.
Thank you for joinging me in sharing ideas on this initiative.
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Monday, 31 May 2010
Hello friends once again
I wish to share briefly my personal experience of applying consultation and participation methods in promoting collective action to foster community development from the perspective of the implementation of my project.
Project
My project "Gender Responsive Budgeting" according to the project plan was divided into two parts. First was to be implemented as part of the assessment of the Course SWS7123. Second was to be implemented back in PNG after the completion of my studies.
Process
The first component was to seek information by consulting organisations that are undertaking similar initiatives around Brisbane area and at the same time provide a forum to encourage ongoing participation by interested persons. The most targetted to participate in this forum was the PNG student community in Brisbane and few others from back in PNG. In doing so, the consultation and participation methods were applied.
Response/results
Most of the organisations consulted around Brisbane were terrifically responsive and provided information or they were a point of referral for me to engage with other most relevant agencies.
However, on the part of PNG groups, response from back home was good but recieved zero response from the student community here in Brisbane.
Reasons
The reasons for the above are many but the most obvious ones are:
(1)that the timing for the invitation to participate and provide comments was not suitable as the students were busy catching up with their own assessments.
(2) The blog site proved to be too technical for these people to input comments. As one of the individual consulted from PNG mentioned...he could not be able to even locate the comment section, let alone be able to enter anything without knowing the technicalities of it.
Hence, based on these I would say that in order to hammer in on what is needed to be achieved, the timing must be right, messages and the medium to deliver these messages must be simple and understandable and must be accessible by majority of the people or target audiences.
From a personal point view of the whole exercise, I am happy that I took the course because by now at least I know how to operate a blogsite and can be able to develop plans and implement community development initiatives. However, it was generally very challenging.
My future plans of the project
Whilst, specifically GRB is a new area of interest for me, I have worked on related at a broader level - participating in the International Open Budget Initiative for the last two years. Hence, it is an area where I have developed interest, and I hope that when I go back to PNG, I get a job that would let me continue this initiative.
It has been an exciting journey for me and I hope it was for you all too.
Good luck in your future endeavours!!
Wallis
What an arresting page - I love the image that adorns your homepage Wallis - so powerful and feminine all at once.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an important topic - I can't wait to see how it develops and who you connect with. Good luck in your planning
Hey wallis,
ReplyDeleteThats a good intiative.
We have very good policies in place to achieve genda equality in a male dominated society. IT has been very slow but we have made progress. Some very common policies which promote genda equality are the women in agriculture, women in business, women's textile training center through the SME policy, Cooperative societies and so on.
Though the policies are there, there is lack of budgetary support from the government. Hence, I believe that by promoting genda reposive budgeting, we can impart the concept in the mainsteam of the government budger.
Good luck
Richard
Hi Wallis,
ReplyDeleteI think it's really important what you are doing by highlightly who benefits from the end product in relation to funding. Often funding serves to keep the powerful in positions of power and they people that have no voice get left out. I'm particularly interested in how funding of different countries addresses the rights of children. This can be to do with maternal death in childbirth, to supporting women with young children, schooling and child health. I think it is wise for governments to invest in the earlier years as research has shown a tenfold return on such investment down the track. Well done for pursuing an important issue which ultimately affects everyone. (I've heard a saying happy wife = happy life!)
Hi Littleoneliberated,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your ideas and interests with me. The gender responsive budgeting initiative is aggressively promoted in many countries around the world both in developed and developing countries since it was first introduced by Australia in 1984 in advocating for women empowerment. However, some countries due to lack of domestic capacity and other developmental drawbacks have not really caught up with the flow. PNG is sadly one of these. Of those who have commenced, it is proved to be very successful such as in some of the African countries, Latin Amererica and in Asia, particularly India,Bangladesh and so on. Likewise, advocating for children in the government's annual budgets is the same and it is commonly known as "child friendly budgets". It has been significantly advocated by various international agencies such as the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). It is also advocated nationally in many countries by various agencies. To answer your question in terms of how respective governemnts are responding to the calls for child friendly budgets, requires further research but generally there has been work undertaken in some of the African and latin american countries, apart from the developed world. Thanks and it was great exchanging interests with you. I hope we continue sharing.
I really appreciate your farewell message too, that is what everyone is battling for - recognition for a happy life!!
Thanks
Wallis
(This comment was posted on 18 May 2010)
ReplyDeleteThank you Laropo for the comment. Yes, the government of PNG has recognised women through putting in place these policies but to date as confirmed by you from the Depart ment of Commerce, which is the key agency for initiating these policies, actual realisation is a major issue. The fundamental reason for this has been the lack of budgetary support to implement the policies. If only the government recognises these with budgetary support, I am sure the impact would be outstanding. So, gender responsive budgeting is really about advocating and sensitising key decision makers so that they make these kind of budgetary decisions that would make a big difference in the lives of our women in the country. Hence, this forum is an avenue for throwing around useful information so that we can understand the benefits of such concepts and perhaps policy makers like yourself could take it forward from here to help our mothers and sisters.
Thank you.
Wallis
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your sharing. very impressive.
Good lucks
Hung
Great effort Wallis. This is no easy area to endeavor given that most political arena have male chauvinists and the structures patriarchal. There is serious need to bring on board a recognition of gender in all sector of development including in the manner in which budgets and developmental programmes designed. All the best.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Timothy. As you have pointed out with the kind of male dominated societies we have, such initiatives are quite challenging to deliver. However, many have successfully achieved in similar societies and it is worth giving a try. I guess it is a matter of developing the right strategies to build connections and sensitise few of those decision makers in government to listen to you. For instance, in Australia, where this idea has began, there was a powerful women lobby group called the 'Women Electoral Lobby' (WEL)that took women's issues to the election back in 1972. The sucess of the Labour government during the 1972 elction owe much to this women's lobby group and in return supported their aspirations full on in terms of policy and legislative reforms to be women friendly. GRB is a result of that. Of course undertaking something like this in this century is quite difficult for especially women as it involves significant amount of resources, but seeking alternative approaches to making a difference as we go on would be much more applicable.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing - really appreciate it as I have great passion for this agenda... looking at other similar countries achieving it motivates me not to give up.
Wallis