1. Introduction 3 Understanding women’s economic and social rights 10
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4.2 Gender budgeting as a tool for monitoring and accountabilityAs discussed briefly above in Sub-Section 3.10 above, gender budgeting can promote accountability for women’s economic and social rights. UN-Women has described gender-responsive budgeting as “government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and the fulfillment of women’s rights.”472 Researchers have highlighted that: The public sector has a key role to play in creating the conditions for gender equality. Through its budget allocations, the state has the potential to redress inequalities and discrimination in the household, in asset ownership, and in labor and credit markets. This can be achieved through various measures including spending on education and training that close gender gaps, investments in access to health care, and expenditures that reduce women’s care burden.473 Furthermore: Use of gender-responsive budgets can be used to systematically ensure adequate resources for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the context of the financial crisis, as long as they are founded on a gender-sensitive macroeconomic policy framework. The gender budgeting initiatives have sometimes failed to meet this need in the past because they are being implemented outside the macroeconomic policy framework. The principles underpinning macroeconomic policy tend to conflict with the gender agenda leading to limited resource allocations. A sector-wide approach to gender budgeting is also recommended as it will enable more resources to be identified to fund the social sector, which benefits women and girls.474 Gender responsive budgeting essentially consists of five components: describing the situation of women and men (as well as girls and boys) when analyzing a particular situation problem; assessing whether government policy and program interventions aimed at addressing that situation have been designed in a gender-sensitive manner; checking to see whether sufficient budgetary allowances have actually been made to implement gender–sensitive policies and programming; checking whether the expenditure has actually been spent according to plan; and lastly, examining the de facto or actual impact of the policies, programs and expenditures in the lives of women and men, girls and boys, with a view to the impact on advancing gender equality.475 Good practice in the area of gender budgeting have been well documented.476 Many countries, such as Australia, Mozambique, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Rwanda, Switzerland, Tanzania, Uganda and the United Kingdom have incorporated gender equality in their national budgets. The European Parliament has also taken important steps to design and apply a gender budgeting methodology to the European Union Budget.477 Gender responsive budgeting can illuminate the reasons underlying gaps between policies and implementation, a frequent barrier to women’s de facto enjoyment of their economic and social rights. In South Africa, a main objective of the Women’s Budget Initiative is to make the functioning of the Government transparent and to hold it accountable for implementing gender-responsive policies.478 According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, that region has seen progress in gender budgeting, but the gains made in this front need to be protected during the current crisis. They have also highlighted that it is especially important to make sure that fiscal stimulus measures do not divert funds set aside for gender budgeting initiatives. Similarly, it is important to have in place strong and effective public expenditure monitoring systems to ensure that budgetary allocations reach their intended beneficiaries.479 In addition, it is important to ensure that poverty indicators used to monitor the effectiveness of anti-poverty policies and programs are themselves made gender-sensitive. Because indicators are often aggregates whose units of analysis are households rather than individuals, they do not necessarily capture women’s experience clearly. As highlighted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) this methodology often wrongly assumes that resources are evenly distributed among all members of a household and that their needs are equivalent.480 4.3 International and regional economic/financial actors and agenciesAs articulated in Sub-Section 2.3 above on understanding the obligations of States, States do not rescind their human rights obligations when they become part of an international financial institution (IFI). IFIs include multi-lateral development banks (e.g. the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank). They also include other global institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most, if not all, IFIs have made commitments to ensure gender equality, at least rhetorically. Many also have specific gender policies in place. For example, the World Bank’s Gender and Development Policy Framework comprises of nine Operational Policies and/or Bank Procedures: five of which are relevant for investment lending generally, one of which is relevant for development policy lending, and three of which are relevant for safeguard policies.481 One of these Operational Policies (OP/BP 4.20) specifically focuses on gender and development.482 The African Development Bank has an Updated Gender Policy and Gender Plan of Action (UGPOA) for 2009-2011.483 The Asian Development Bank also has an Operational Policy on Gender and Development484 and the Inter-American Development Bank has adopted a Operational Policy on Gender Equality in Development.485 However, other institutions such as the IMF have no gender policy whatsoever, and critiques highlight that even when gender policies are in place they “… tend to be weak, are poorly resourced, understaffed, and lack incentives for staff to engender their work. … gender experts -- or IFI staff who work on gender issues -- comprise less than 1 percent at all the IFIs, and the average is .3 percent.”486 Accountability of IFIs to international human rights norms in general, and women’s rights in particular, is a major challenge which makes it all the more important to enforced the ETOs of States (as detailed in Sub-Section 2.3 above). While some IFIs have internal accountability mechanisms, one problem is that internal policies at times have been written in such a way as to exclude certain decisions from gender equality standards. For example, the World Bank applies its gender and development policy only to project-based lending, and not to policy-based lending, despite the fact that policy-based lending frequently supports economic reforms that significantly harm women and girls through cuts to social services and benefits.487 Lack of transparency as been cited is also a major concern, making it even more difficult to bring effective complaints using IFI complaint mechanisms.488 |