Commonwealth Secretariat
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  5. Documents
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    4. Meeting documents, New York, 23-24 February, 2008
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    1. Gender Mainstreaming Series on Gender Issues
    2. Gender Management Systems Series
    3. Gender Mainstreaming Series on Development Issues
  8. Gender Links

Gender Responsive Budgeting

Gender responsive budgeting provides a means for determining the effect of government revenue and expenditure policies on women and men. These initiatives, led either by governments or civil society groups, involve the examination of the gender distributional outcomes of budgetary allocations, that is, how these allocations affect the economic and social opportunities of women and men.

Attempts to apply a gender analysis to government budgets began in Australia in 1984. Canada followed in 1993, with a one-off NGO exercise and then the South African women budget initiative began in 1994. In 1995, the Commonwealth Secretariat sought to build on the successes of these pioneering initiatives, and undertook pilots in 5 member countries. To date, Gender responsive budgets have taken place in forty countries, nearly half of them Commonwealth.

At their Sixth Meeting held in New Delhi in April 2000, Ministers Responsible for Women's Affairs requested that Finance Ministers endorse the integration of a gender analysis into the national budget. Gender responsive budgeting was to be included on the agenda of the September 2000 Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting (FMM) - latter postponed following the 11 September 2001 event.

The Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has put together an inter-agency programme on gender responsive budgeting. The programme website http://www.gender-budgets.org/ has relevant information on this global initiative. Commonwealth Secretariat documents can also be directly accessed from the publications list.  

The Governance Resource Centre (GRC) of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has expanded its online library to include a new section specifically dealing with gender budgeting. The new gender budgeting section forms part of a wider topic guide to public financial management and accountability. The GRC Exchange is a free, public access service compiled by leading international experts and dedicated to sharing the latest information about governance in development.  Funded by DFID, the GRC Exchange hosts specialised topic guides providing key resources on a range of governance themes such as political systems, aid instruments, service delivery, access to justice, conflict, and more.  The GRC Exchange also provides searchable libraries of governance documents, organisations, conferences and training opportunities.