PSA Northern Postgraduate Conference June 6 2008
Angela O’Hagan, Glasgow Caledonian University, Gender Budgeting in Europe: A Sustainable route to policy change?
Gender Budgeting in Europe: A sustainable route to policy change?
Introduction
Gender Budget Analysis (GBA) is an approach to policy making and resource allocation through state budgetary processes that incorporates gender analysis of policy objectives, outcomes and impacts. It is based on the feminist economics perspective that the national budget processes are not gender neutral, but are in fact gender blind – i.e. that in not taking account of gender factors the impact of budget decisions may well have unintended consequences on women and men which may further the differences in their experiences of public services (Elson 1997).
GBA is the term for the process within policymaking and budget setting; Gender Budget Initiative (GBI) is the name given to the activity or project which aims to implement this process. This short paper considers examples of GBIs within the EU and the favourable conditions which have facilitated their existence. It draws on analysis from the current literature on GBA and GBIs globally and EU countries in presenting the challenges to the sustainability of these initiatives for policy change.
Gender Budget Initiatives in Europe
Although GBA first emerged in the ‘women’s budgets’ of the Australian federal government in the 1980’s, it took until the late 1990’s and into the 2000’s for GBIs to become visible in Europe. The 1995 Beijing Platforms for Action[1] other impetus from the UN and the international finance institutions and then the European Commission were all impulses for the initiation of GBA in Europe. The drive for gender mainstreaming in the early 1990’s was a principal lever for the approach to policymaking and resource allocation of GBA in European countries, while for developing countries relationships with unilateral donors and the International Finance Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were significant drivers. The background to GBA and current GBIs is covered in a growing literature (see for instance Budlender 2004; Budlender and Hewitt 2002; Elson 997, 998; Frey 2008; Holvoet 2007; Jubeto 2007; Mackay et al 2005; McKay et al 2002; McKay 2002, 2003, 2004; McKay and Gillespie 2006; O’Hagan and Gillespie 2008; Sharp, 2003, 2005, 2007).
There are somewhere in the region of 40 current GBIs worldwide. GBIs in Europe, as globally, are as diverse as they are similar. Similar to the development of gender mainstreaming strategies, GBIs have many similarities in their beginnings, their ways of working, and the political and social environments in which they have emerged have many common characteristics (see Jubeto 2007; Mackay et al 2005; Mackay and Bilton 2003; True and Mintrom 2001). That said, the literature also affirms that there is no standard model for a GBI and that each is a creation of its own national conditions, meaning practice and progress must develop within that distinct environment (see for instance McKay, 2004).
Supporters of GBIs argue that gender budget analysis, or gender –responsive budgeting as it is also known, can effect policy change in a number of ways:
- Better policy making in terms of the policy process and outcomes;
- Making women – and men – visible in public policy by exposing the impact of economic policy;
- Better policy outcomes efficient public policy process and outcomes in services from more targeted policy objectives and clearly aligned spend;
- By acting to correct the ‘gender blindness’ inherent in current approaches to policy and budgetary processes;
- More democratic budgetary and policy processes through increased transparency and participation leading to more equitable outcomes (Elson 1997,1998; Jubeto 2007; McKay 2004; Scottish Women’s Budget Group 2008).
It is important to consider the role of the international governance bodies such as the United Nations, Council of Europe, and European Commission in establishing GBI in European states. A series of formal declarations have come forward since the UN CEDAW Conference in Beijing in 1995 and reinforced in subsequent conferences most recently in the agreed conclusions on “Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women” at the 52nd Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2008 (E/CN.6/2008/L.8).
The European institutions have also made significant commitments to gender mainstreaming which contain references to budgeting and macro-economic policy. Specific measures to promote gender budgeting include:
- 2007, Council of Europe Recommendation on Gender Equality Standards and Mechanisms, 2007;
- 2005, Council of Europe Final Report of Group of Specialists on Gender Budgeting;
- 2003, European Parliament Resolution on Gender Budgeting – Building public budgets from a gender perspective.
- 2003, Opinion of European Commission Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men.
The development programmes and publications from the Commonwealth Secretariat and UNIFEM have contributed substantially to the spread of information and knowledge on the practice of GBA. These have contained a specific focus on the perspective of individuals and civil society groups engaged in GBIs (see Budlender and Hewitt 2000, 2002).
Favourable Conditions for GBIs
Evaluations of country-specific initiatives in these publications and by other commentators, notably Budlender (2003, 2005), Sharp and Broomhill (2002) have highlighted a list of factors they consider to be relevant and to some degree pre-requisite for it to be possible for GBIs to be initiated.
These include:
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PSA Northern Postgraduate Conference June 6 2008
- Political will
- Political change
- Social change
- External pressure
- Pro-equality political climate
- Commitment to gender mainstreaming
- Stakeholders and players in place
- Policy context supportive
- Commitment to external policy drivers
- Positive approach to governance
- Equality or ‘women’s’ “machinery” in place within the institutional arrangements
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PSA Northern Postgraduate Conference June 6 2008
Of the GBIs currently or recently active in Europe, it appears that these conditions exist to greater and lesser extents. The example of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group (SWBG) and the experience of promoting gender budgeting in the Scottish budgetary process is evidence of this. As has been well documented (see Mackay et al. 2005; McKay 2004; McKay and Gillespie 2006; O’Hagan and Gillespie 2008), the advent of devolved government to Scotland presented a “window of opportunity for the women’s lobby in Scotland to push for policy change” (McKay et al 2002, 5). This was a created by a combination of factors in the lead-in to devolution including a more visible and dynamic women’s movement calling for equal representation in political representation and pressing for equality to be a cornerstone of the new government institutions in Scotland (Breitenbach and Mackay 2001). The following table illustrates how the ‘favourable conditions’ were met in Scotland in the period 1999-2000.
Table 1. Favourable Conditions for GBA in Scotland 1999-2000
Conditions / Situation in Scotland- Political will
- Political change
- Social change
- External pressure
- Pro-equality political climate
- Commitment to gender mainstreaming
- Stakeholders and players in place
- Policy context supportive
- Commitment to external policy drivers
- Positive approach to governance
- Equality or ‘women’s’ “machinery” in place within the institutional arrangements.
This insight into the Scottish experience is helpful in understanding the challenges and country-specific political dynamics inherent in transforming high-level commitments of international governance institutions promoting practical gender budgeting initiatives.
Characteristics of GBIs
While sharing objectives, methodologies and structures in common, as already stated, there is considerable divergence between the characteristics of GBIs as they have developed in the context of and in response to country-specific opportunities and environments. These variances include the range of actors involved in promoting GBA and securing political support at different levels of government. These actors can include feminist women’s organisations – who have been a key feature in the propulsion of GBIs; civil society organisations more widely, including church groups and other rights advocates; academics and external researchers; political parties and individual politicians (Budlender and Hewitt 2002; (Council of Europe 2005; Jubeto 2007). In Germany and Italy the role of activists from feminist and citizens’ organisations or academia at the local and regional level have been particularly important in promoting GBA and initiating local projects and process change at the local, city and regional government levels. This has been the case to date in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Genoa, Modena and the Italian region of Emiglia Romana.
Another key variance in the nature and structure of GBIs in Europe is the level of government at which they operate. In the UK, for example, the initiatives all work at national government level, allowing for the slightly controversial inclusion in this paper of Scotland and Wales as separate nations. The UK ‘Women’s Budget Group’ has consistently worked at the level of UK Government seeking to influence the Treasury; the SWBG has focused on the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government; and the Welsh Budget Group has sought to influence the process within the Welsh Assembly Government.
Across Europe however national, whole government, initiatives are less common as GBIs have been initiated within individual central government departments or at regional or city level of local government. While they may have been consolidated within national policies, such as national equality action plans, ordraw on national government products, such as disaggregated data and statistical collection they are not (yet) national, or whole government initiatives. That said, many are working across several central government ministries, or as in the case of Belgium were initiated as a whole government initiative.
As can bee seen from the following tables, GBIs at national level include UK, Scotland, Belgium, France, Ireland; Austria initially with the Ministry of Health before becoming a legislative requirement in 2005; Finland aims to have a cross-government GBA process by 2008; Sweden, and Norway. Again the variances include the extent of legal compulsion, as in the case of the Austrian federal government law in 2005, and parliamentary engagement. In France, for example, parliamentary intervention led to the creation of "La Jaune Budgetaire” process whereby an annex providing a breakdown of spend on women and men and equality-specific projects has been requested by the French parliament since 2000. National level GBIs have tended to be located within the ministry holding the gender equality portfolio, which again varies across countries from Equality Units – such as in the Scottish Government; to Ministries for Equality and Families as in the case of several of the Nordic countries. The Ministry or national department for Finance (and Revenue) has also been identified as a key focus and location of GBIs, as therefore a ‘target’ for external groups in lobbying for the development of GBA (Mackay et al. 2005) and a focus for training and awareness raising (Jubeto 2007).
While experiences in Germany and the UK countries highlight the importance of civil society organisations and feminist activists, the examples from Spain and the Nordic countries profile the role of the state. Further analysis is required to explore the extent to which developments within regional and national level government departments have been the consequence of committed individuals within the bureaucracy or elected government, or whether there has been a ‘whole government’ approach to progressing international drivers for gender equality. In the case of Spain, national government activity to date has been limited to a current initiative with the Ministry of Health and the national sex equality body, the Instituto de la Mujer[3], who are collaborating on a practical guide on gender budgeting, being developed by external academic consultants[4]. The government of Andalucía, one of the 18 devolved regional “Autonomous Communities” of Spain, embarked upon a GBI in 2003 at the instigation of an elected member, championing the initiative and the process which is ongoing, following the publication of the Gender Impact Evaluation Report of the 2008 Budget for Andalucía in December 2007. A previous initiative of the Basque Government supported by Emakunde[5] has subsequently stalled but a new initiative is underway with the municipal government of Bilbao city council.
The characteristics of GBIs as explored in this section and the following table serve to highlight the complexities of institutional relationships and the interplay between favourable variables that can support their development. While GBIs vary in their core characteristics, and in their focus, it is clear that to greater and lesser extents they share the same vulnerabilities with regard to their sustainability.
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PSA Northern Postgraduate Conference June 6 2008
Table 2. Gender Budget Initiatives in Europe: Institutional structures
Country[6] / GBA as national legislative requirement / Level ofGovernment GBA / Active Civil Society/
Women’s Groups / Identified
Government Dept./
Oversight / National
Parliamentary reporting requirements on GBA / National Equality/ Women’s Statutory / National Equality body committed to GBA / Political Party
involvement/
commitment
UK / No – not explicit. Gender Equality Duty open to interpretation / National / Yes / Yes – Treasury Champion / No / Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) / Yes / No
Scotland / No – not explicit. Gender Equality Duty open to interpretation / National / Yes / Yes – Equality Unit / Yes (?) / Yes (GB Equality and Human Rights Commission) / Yes / Mixed
Spain / No / Autonomous Communities – Basque Country, Andalucía; Individual National Ministry / No / Ministry of Health / No / Instituto de la Mujer / Project involvement / No
Austria / Yes – since 2005 / National and Lander / Yes / Yes / No / No / No / No
Germany / No / Lander and Cities – Berlin, Munich, Cologne / Yes / Yes / No / No / No / Yes
Switzerland / No / Canton and City, Basel / Yes – including church groups.
Trade Unions / No / Unclear / No / No / Yes
France / No / National / No / Yes / Yes / No / No / No
Ireland / No / National / No / Yes / Within the Framework of the National Development Plan / Yes / Yes / No
Italy / No / Regions - Emiglia Romana and Cities –Genoa and Modena / No / No / No / Yes / Yes / No
Sweden[7] / No – requirement at ministerial/departmental level / National and municipal / No / Yes / Equality Plans / No / No / No
Norway / No / National / No / Ministerial Gender Equality Working Group / Gender Equality Annex / No / No / No
Finland / No – National Equality Plan / National / No / No / Gender equality National Plan / No / No / No
Belgium / No / National Pilot
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PSA Northern Postgraduate Conference June 6 2008
Challenges for sustainability
GBIs seek to promote change simultaneously within the policy and budgetary processes in terms of policy formulation and content, and in resource allocation and implementation process. They have largely been conceived and developed within the context of gender mainstreaming, the process of embedding gender in policy analysis and formulation. Both these approaches whether conceived as separate or interdependent are essentially meta-policy analysis process concerned with the way in which policy is made: what units of analysis and perspectives as well as which actors are brought into the policy process. This range of factors, along with the ‘favourable conditions’ facilitating the development of GBIs all serve to highlight the potentially precarious stability and sustainability of these initiatives.
To some degree the challenges of sustainability for GBIs are of course the flip-side of the favourable conditions and the extent to which they themselves can prevail in a fluid political environment. Drawing on recent case study and the GBA literature more generally, the factors which can threaten to undermine GBIs are not the absence of follow through from international bodies or the lack of adherence to international ordinance by national governments but rather a series of factors much closer to home. These include:
- vulnerability of external groups promoting GBA, including precarious funding arrangements and the voluntary nature of these pressures groups;
- relationships between GBA advocates outside with government officials and politicians, including the turnover of officials; delicate balance of party political relationships; and perception of outsider groups in relation to government
- levels of support for GBA within government including the location of GBA at which level of government and within which department (Holvoet 2007); the visible support of ministers and other potential champions; the existence and status of equality machinery within government; and the involvement of “active community voices” in the promotion of GBA (Sharp 2007)
- the need for accountability mechanisms across government departments and between the executive and parliament, as well as to external stakeholders (Sharp 2007; Holvoet 2007)
- cultures within ministries and departments as well as the skills and “perceived priorities” of officials and politicians (Sharp 2007; Heclo and Wildavsky 1974).
- availability and use of disaggregated data
- transition from awareness raising amongst officials and politicians to “embedding these processes [of cross-ministry collaboration]
- widening of the “equalities” agenda and the dilution of gender focus within policy making in some countries, especially the United Kingdom (O’Hagan, 2008).
Conclusion
There is a growing body of practical experience and innovation at all levels of government in the promotion of GBA across Europe, drawing on global developments and international policy levers. This has led to a range of initiatives to promote gender budget analysis as an approach to policy making and resource allocation which its advocates claim delivers more effective, better targeted and more equitable outcomes from public policy objectives.