Advocating for gender equity in budgets.

A government budget directly or indirectly affects the lives of all the citizens. Frequently however people with modest means and little political influence are the ones mostly affected by the budget decisions. On the face of it, a budget appears to be a gender neutral policy instrument, but then it can also ignore the different socially determined roles, responsibilities and capabilities of women and men. In this case, it becomes a gender blind budget.

It is widely acknowledged that budgets are central to the development process and are not only tools for collecting and allocating financial resources, but also powerful instruments for shaping the future of nations in ways that advance or retard social, economic and political progress. FOWODE believes that all development initiatives must clearly show benefits for women and men and that a gender perspective should be integrated in policies, programmes and budgets. Only then can the government show accountability for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

There is public pressure for higher standards of accountability and transparency in government. Efficiency and effective budget performance is the cliché of politicians. One of the main goals of the GBP is to make budget systems more transparent and accountable and thus more responsive to the needs of poor women and men. The GBP will act as a tool for improving accountability and achieving effective policy implementation through providing gender analyzed budget information in simple easy to read briefs. The legislators will be in a position to question government expenditure and allocations whether they address gender as well as women concerns.

Most legislators especially women legislators do not have the skills to analyze budget information so as to challenge and create new budget proposals. Most budgets are written in very academic language that ordinary councilors especially women who form a third (1/3) of the council and do not have any economics or finance background do not understand. They thus tend to shy away from them and from asking finance or economics related questions. This is no exception fro the male legislators. The GBP seeks to demystify and break down the budget and interpret it in a “lay-mans” language. The GBP will provide information on how the budget affects different groups of people and how the governments could improve on budget performance.

1 center for budget advocacy (CBA), one of the rights based advocacy units of the integrated social development center (ISODEC) in Ghana.
2 issue briefs are a summarized form of the researched district gender budget publication.