Case Study: Gender Analysis of a Budget

Using the framework of a budget being analyzed along gender lines, the key dimensions of a budget analysis project are:

1. Review Public Expenditure;

NHRIs can monitor the extent to which States consider:

• Priority given to gender equality, or other thematic issues, and the advancement public expenditure between programmes;
• Presence of discrimination against vulnerable groups, for example women and girls in expenditures;
• Adequacy of public expenditure for realisation of gender equality in the impact of public expenditure; and
• Gender equality and public expenditure reform.

2. Public revenues, especially taxation;

• For example, CEDAW implies that women should be equally free to choose how to live their lives; and the tax system should not favour one set of choices above another; and
• The income tax system should be neutral in the burden of taxation on different types of families, taking into account the value of unpaid as well as paid work, and irrespective of the marital status and sex of the partners.

3. Macroeconomics of the budget (secondary impacts on inflation, jobs and economic growth)

• Macroeconomic policy should support the right to paid work on equal terms, for example between women and men (CEDAW Article 11); and
• Vulnerable groups should not suffer disproportionately if, as a result of a budget deficit, public expenditures are cut (for example, see CEDAW Article 2);

4. Budget decision-making processes:

Some of the key areas in the budget making process should reflect the participation of vulnerable groups in the process and this, in turn, reflects the need to ensure political and local leadership, and the importance of information about how current budget decisions are made and how they affect different sectors of the population. Taking women’s equality as an example, this means:

• increasing the presence of women;
• increasing the capacity of women;
• reforming budget decision making processes to make them more transparent and participatory;
• special measures to increase women’s presence in:
• national parliaments, and in parliamentary committees that scrutinize budgets;
• local council, and in council committees responsible for budgets; and
• participatory planning and budget processes.

Finally, citizens have:

• a right to information, including sex-disaggregated information; and
• a right to demand a formal investigation or seek legal redress for misappropriation of funds and poor delivery of services.26