Gender Budgeting:
Influencing Policy Choices in Niger and Ukraine

By Gordon Evans, Marie Fortier-Balogh and Diana Ivancic-Skinner

Introduction

The rationale for developing a gender-responsive budget is clear.  As the state’s pre-eminent policy instrument, the budget serves as the primary vehicle through which governments effect change.  Put simply, the budget is “a machine to get things done.”[1]  If gender equality policies are to progress from statements of intent to impact, they must be reinforced through the budget.  But here a dilemma arises: a table of financial aggregates, even when disaggregated by goals, objectives, activities, outputs, outcomes et al, rarely sheds much light on the budgetary implications for women and girls.

 

 

Economists tend to view budgets as gender-neutral instruments since budgets do not mention men and women but consist of financial aggregates.  Budgets, however, are not gender neutral, they are “gender blind.”[2]

To address this gap, numerous countries have instituted the collection of gender-disaggregated data.  A smaller number of countries have moved the yardsticks further and produced gender budgets; i.e., “a government budget that explicitly integrates gender into any or all of the parts of the decision-making process regarding [resource] allocation and revenue generation.”[3]  Examples range from Australia, which pioneered gender budgeting in the 1980s with its Women’s Budget Statement, to South Africa, where for over a decade the Women’s Budget Initiative has enlisted civil society as a partner with government to understand and improve budgetary impacts on women and girls,[4] to Morocco, where the Ministry of Economy and Finance produces a Gender Report assessing the gender implications of ministry policies and programs.

 

Canada’s record in gender budgeting remains less than stellar, although the Manitoba and, in particular, Quebec governments have made strides towards institutionalizing gender analysis.  Status of Women Canada continues to pressure all Canadian governments to mainstream the related methodologies.  Domestic foot-dragging aside, Canada stands as a strong proponent of gender budgeting in the international arena. 

 

This case study profiles how the CIDA-funded program, Deployment for Democratic Development (DDD), is supporting gender budgeting in Ukraine and Niger. 

 

PROJECT PROFILES

Country: Ukraine Title: National State Budget Analysis by Secretariat of the President Client: Secretariat of the President Canadian Lead: Conference Board of Canada Related Outputs: ·         Secretariat of the President staff trained in how to undertake a gender disaggregated analysis of the State Budget; methodology included in budget assessment manual Status: Completed (final report in March 2009)

Country: Niger Title: Strengthening Capacity to Implement Niger’s National Gender Policy and 10-Year Action Plan Client: Ministry for the Advancement of Women and Child Protection Canadian Lead: Conseil du statut de la femme du Québec Related Outputs: ·         Application of “Grille ADS” (gender differentiated analysis) with a view to creating the necessary data bank for gender budgeting Status: Underway

Governance and Gender Profiles

Even among aficionados of comparative politics, Ukraine and Niger present an uncommon pairing.  The case study objective, however, is not to compare Ukraine and Niger, but to examine how gender budgeting is being implemented in different governance systems and socio-economic environments.   It is hoped that lessons learned from these and other cases will inform future efforts to tailor gender budgeting initiatives.   

 

Ukraine and Niger’s governance systems are both semi-presidential.  Both countries have made strides towards democratization, but continue to confront political instability and, especially in Niger, democratic challenges.[5]  Socio-economic indicators place Niger among the poorest, least developed countries in the world while Ukraine falls in the middle.  Gender indicators reflect a similar pattern, although gaps in female literacy and maternal mortality are more extreme.  With respect to governance indicators, Ukraine generally places 10 to 15 percentiles above Niger in the country rankings, although Ukraine is perceived as more corrupt.  The composition of the two civil services differs markedly: 75% of Ukraine’s 219,000 public servants are female vs. 22% of 47,000 in Niger.[6] 

 

Table 1 presents a range of widely-used indicators providing comparative rankings of Canada, Niger and Ukraine.

Table 1: Governance & Gender Indicators: Canada, Niger & Ukraine

Org. [7]	Measure	Basis	Canada	Niger	Ukraine
WB	Voice & Accountability	percentile	93	36	45
WB	Gov’t Effectiveness	percentile	96	17	30
WB	Rule of Law	percentile	96	20	28
FH	Political Rights	1-5 score	1	3	3
FH	Civil Liberties	1-5 score	1	4	2
RwB	Press Freedom	173 countries	13	130	87
TI	Corruption Perception	180 countries	9	115	134
WB	Purchasing Power Parity	208 countries	25	203	113
UN	Human Development	177 countries	4	174	76
UN	Gender Development	157 countries	4	155	69
UN	Maternal Mortality	ratio per 100K	7	1800	18
UN	Female Literacy	percentage	99%	15%	99%
UN	Female Secondary School Enrollment	F-M ratio	.98	.68	.92

WB=World Bank; FH=Freedom House; RwB=Reporters Without Borders; TI=Transparency International

 

From a budgeting perspective, it is hardly surprising that Niger’s government faces more fundamental challenges in effectively translating strategies, such as the National Gender Policy and 2008-18 Action Plan, into budgeted policies and programs.  Less developed countries typically confront greater staff capacity, data reliability, and IT support problems.  Niger’s low proportion of female civil servants, particularly at management levels, further impedes the implementation of gender equality policies.  Ukraine is hardly problem-free in this regard, but the starting point for developing a gender-responsive budget is obviously very different. 

Project Definition

In Ukraine, gender budgeting was not included in the original project design, which aimed to strengthen the budget analysis capacity of analysts in the Office of the President.  The gender budgeting component was added at the request of CIDA and urging of project participants, the large majority of whom were women.  Fortuitously, the Conference Board of Canada had teamed with Dr. Olga Romanyuk of Ukraine’s International Centre for Policy Studies, who had prior expertise in this area.  Ultimately, an individual chapter of the project-produced Budget Analysis Manual was devoted to analyzing the gender impact of budget measures.

 

In Niger, gender budgeting was originally intended as the project’s focus, but was deferred at the urging of the Canadian expert, Ms. Christine Pelchat, President of Quebec’s Council on the Status of Women.  Ms. Pelchat recommended that they begin with a more basic but essential and related task, the collection and analysis of gender-differentiated policy and program data. 

 

Project Methodologies

The Ukraine gender budgeting methodology was prepared by Dr. Romanyuk using the 2008 state budget as the base case.  The manual suggests a variety of ways to analyze budget expenditures from a gender perspective, including the percentage of female beneficiaries for various programs, the proportion of female civil servants employed within each ministry/ministry program; and the proportion of female employees in occupations receiving state support.  Each government program was categorized as gender neutral, supportive of men, or supportive of women, with social programs assessed separately.  A ten-step gender audit process was also included.

 

The budget manual chapter, Analyzing the Gender Impact of Budget Measures, freely acknowledged that existing legal and institutional gaps constrain the preparation of a gender-responsive budget in Ukraine.  The manual proposed several remedial measures, including legal changes to the budget code, establishment of an administrative body promoting gender equality, expanded collection of gender-differentiated statistics by the state statistics bureau, public awareness campaigns, and the provision of training in gender analysis.  Nonetheless, sufficient data exists currently for the Office of the President to assess the gender impacts of the state budget. 

 

Eight ADS Steps – Niger Taking into account different needs of men and women and the goal of equitable outcomes… 1.        identify problems/key issues in implementing the approach 2.        determine realistic objectives and indicators 3.        develop policy options for decision makers 4.        prepare related consultation/communications strategies 5.        design the project and an operational action plan 6.        establish the implementation strategy and resource requirements 7.        evaluate the project; revise as required 8.        promote sustainability by establishing an administrative monitoring mechanism

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was not the case in Niger.  The government’s ability to implement the National Gender Policy and Action Plan is impaired by data deficiencies and inattention to gender issues by decision makers.  To address the data gap and strengthen the case for taking differential gender impacts into account when making policy/budgetary decisions, it was recommended that Quebec’s model for collecting gender-differentiated data (analyse differenciée entre les sexes – ADS) be adapted.  The Canadian expert, Ms. Yasmina Chouakri, worked with the project participants to do this between November 2008 and January 2009.  Ultimately, an eight-step approach was finalized for testing with three pilot ministries: Education; Health; and Hydraulics and Environment.  The next step will involve the application of the ADS matrix.

 

Expected Results

Neither project was directly tasked with establishing a gender-responsive budget process.  In Ukraine, it is hoped that the President Office’s capacity to critique the state budget from a gender perspective will increase pressure on the government to move in this direction.  In Niger, it is hoped that, by demonstrating how gender-differentiated data can be used to inform policy options, decision makers will see the value of taking gender considerations into account when making policy and budgetary choices.  Both projects provide analytic tools that, if applied, inject factually-supported evidence concerning gender impacts into the government’s policy deliberations. 

 

 

Lessons Learned

The two case studies present different approaches in dissimilar countries to a common goal.  Both projects, however, share several lessons learned in introducing gender budgeting.

 

• Debate the Design.  The donor’s project proposal is intended to guide rather than prescribe deliberations with the client on project design.  Both the Ukraine and Niger projects benefitted from taking the time to get it right.  Combining Canadian expertise and experience with client understanding of the real issues and constraints produced meaningful interventions.  In Ukraine, a project originally conceived as a series of capacity-building workshops on macroeconomic analysis was reshaped to produce a budget analysis manual, including the gender budgeting chapter.  In Niger, rather than deliver the standard workshop extolling the benefits of gender budgeting, the project chose to focus first on the arduous but essential task of collecting and analyzing real gender-differentiated data to discover real gender-based policy problems.

 

• Drill Down.  Too often, development assistance equates capacity building with generic training events of minimal relevance to the host country or participants’ actual jobs.  For the Ukraine project, success was achieved when the analysts in the Office of the President worked directly with the consultants at a computer to apply the new methodology to the actual draft 2009 state budget.  The experience transcended job relevance; it proved job defining.  In Niger, the Ministry for the Advancement of Women and Child Protection and participating pilot ministries were persuaded that a gender budgeting process could not occur in the absence of facts about the differential participation in and impacts on men and women of ministry policies and programs.  Evidence-based policy decisions cannot be made in a data vacuum.  Both projects recommended practical tools rather than theoretical concepts to address these gaps.

 

• Tailor Imported Methodologies.  Allen Schick’s seminal paper, Why Most Developing Countries Should Not Try New Zealand Reforms, underscored the dangers of direct policy transfer from developed countries.  In applying the Quebec ADS model to Niger, several key adaptations were made through a participative process with the project team.  The six-step Quebec process was expanded to eight with additional emphasis on validating data reliability, selecting feasible indicators, preparing action plans, and establishing monitoring mechanisms.  The Ukraine project drew on international models, but developed a unique model adapted directly to Ukraine’s budget methodology.

 

• Engage the Ministry of Finance.  This lesson falls into the category of prospective, but is fundamental to the sustainability of both projects.  Whatever the methodology, wherever it is conducted, the Ministry of Finance must ultimately buy into the process or, at a minimum, cooperate.  Gender budgeting cannot meaningfully exist apart from the actual budget process.

 

The key challenge for gender-informed budget analysis and policy-making is moving beyond gender-targeted interventions to full and sustained gender mainstreaming in the budget process.”[8]

In Ukraine, although the analysis is conducted outside the government by the Office of the President, the Budget Analysis Manual acknowledges that the introduction of gender budgeting will require changes to the Budget Code.  Moreover, it recommends a more participative budget process where gender considerations are taken into account at each step.  The Niger project, although currently focused on the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data, ultimately aims to position evidence-based gender analysis as a key driver of policy decision-making.  When it comes to policy implementation, most if not all roads lead through the Ministry of Finance and the budget process.   

 

 

 

Knowledge Transfer Potential

The potential and need for knowledge transfer with respect to gender budgeting are high.  This is an emerging field where lessons learned can transform rather than simply fine tune best practice.  Moreover, the information flow cannot follow the classic routing from developed to developing countries for the simple reason that most developed countries do not themselves prepare gender-responsive budgets. 

 

In fact, as evidenced by South Africa’s Women’s Budget Initiative, this is one area where developing countries are showing leadership.  In terms of information resources, the United Nations Development Fund for Women supports an entire website devoted to gender budgeting.[9]  By contrast, the OECD Journal of Budgeting web page lists over 150 articles published on current budgeting practice since 2001 without a single mention of gender budgeting.  On this subject at least, knowledge transfer will be a two-way street. 

Looking Ahead

DDD’s cross-cutting case studies are presented as living documents that explore projects with a common theme, in this case gender budgeting.  The case studies will be revised and expanded as new projects come on stream, existing projects wrap up, and completed projects are evaluated.  This case study focused on two projects related to gender budgeting.  Although neither will result in a gender-responsive budget, both advance its potential.  In Ukraine, building a gender analysis capacity in the Office of the President equips a highly influential body with technical ammunition to exert pressure on the Government.  In Niger, the insertion of gender-differentiated data into the policy process represents a critical early step in fostering awareness that policy choices and program expenditures affect men and women in very different ways.  DDD will be revisiting these projects in a year to check on progress.  Stay tuned.

 

Gordon Evans is currently serving as the advisor on Accountable Public Institutions for the Deployment for Democratic Development team. Marie Fortier-Balogh is the Co-manager of DDD for IPAC.  Diana Ivancic-Skinner is the Democratization and Human Rights Analyst/Knowledge Facilitator for DDD and IPAC’s Program Manager for the CIDA-funded Good Governance Program.

 

 

Endnotes

[1] Quoted from presentation by Robin Wright, Deputy Minister of Finance, Government of Canada in: Ratansi, Y.; Towards Gender Responsive Budgeting: Rising to the Challenge of  Achieving Gender Equality (Report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women; House of Commons; Ottawa; 2008).

[2] Morgan, C.; Gender Budgets: An Overview (Parliamentary Information and Research Centre; Library of Parliament; 2007).  This excerpt references the work of Diane Elson.

[3] Ratansi, Y., ibid.

[4] Participants include the South African Office on the Status of Women, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, several members of Parliament, gender focal points within government departments and the Ministry of Finance.

[5] In Ukraine, the ongoing friction between the President and Prime Minister and with Russia and Europe over natural gas shipments has increased tensions.  In Niger, the President’s recent dissolution of Parliament, pledge to hold a referendum to remove constitutional limits on presidential terms of office, and assumption of emergency powers following an unfavourable Constitutional Court ruling on the referendum have raised serious questions concerning the fragility of democracy in Niger.

[6] Ukraine figures from Main Department of Civil Service, Government of Ukraine; Niger figures cited in January Niger Project report.

[7] This table references the following measures: 3 of the 6 World Bank Governance Indicators; Freedom House’s Freedom Rankings; Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index; Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index; World Bank’s Measure of Purchasing Power Parity; UN Human Development Report’s Human Development Index; Gender Development Index; Female Literacy measure; and Female-Male Secondary School Enrolment Ratio.

[8] Global Monitoring Report (World Bank; Washington DC; 2007)

[9] The website is also supported by the Commonwealth Secretariat and Canada’s International Development Research Centre.