Definition

Definition

Gender Budgeting is part of the gender equality policy strategy Gender Mainstreaming. Gender Budgeting focuses on gender-related analysis and gender equality-oriented evaluation of the distribution of resources. These include in particular money, time and paid and unpaid work.
The aim of Gender Budgeting is gender equality between women and men in the distribution of resources.

It is necessary to understand Gender Budgeting in such a comprehensive way
  • because it resists restriction to the resource money. For actual gender equality between women and men in the distribution of resources it is necessary to include, besides the “official”, monetary economy (flows of money, income and paid work), private, unpaid reproductive work as well (provision of food, etc., child-rearing, nursing care and honorary work). The most important resource, the use of which revels the gender-relevant interplay between these two areas, is time.

  • because it is only in this way that the indirectly discriminatory consequences of the shift of provision-related tasks between the state, private industry and the private sphere can be recognised. In the course of such changes, privatization frequently takes place in a double sense, one part of these tasks being put in the hands of the market-oriented service industry and another part being left to the private sphere as unpaid work. An effect of this, whether intentional or not, is that the majority of this burden being shifted into the private sphere is loaded onto women as unpaid work due to the gender-specific division of labor that still prevails.

  • because even decisions which are not budgetary decisions can have considerable impact on the distribution of and disposal over resources. Therefore, Gender Budgeting must be put into practice not only in the policy field budget but also in a number of other policy fields and subject areas and when using existing methods. As well as the budget policy field, these include primarily the policy fields grants and participation, the subject areas finance, employment, industry, family and social policy and social involvement as well as the methods of impact assessment (of legislation), impact analysis and evaluation.

  • because Gender Budgeting is not just aimed at public institutions, but also at corporations, associations and NGOs.
It is not enough to see Gender Budgeting as being just gender-differentiated analysis on the use of certain public expenditure. This is just a small part of it, albeit a necessary one. But this alone does not permit a gender equality-oriented evaluation of an overall budget to be carried out, nor can any statements be made concerning the gender-related interplay of this expenditure with other resources (see also “background and development”).
erstellt von Administrator zuletzt verändert: 02.01.2010 20:07