Introduction
Budgeting is an important part of every government and economy. Each year, governments in all places make budgets to finance different sectors of the economy such as education, health, agriculture and other sectors. Most governments make their budgets to address all the needs of everyone in those sectors no matter if they are male of female. But the discussions about equality of genders recently has given rise to recent thoughts about how national budgets affect each gender in the economy.
The International monetary fund (IMF) is promoting and encouraging policy makers to consider gender budgeting. This type of budgeting takes into consideration how women and men in each economy are impacted by the budget. Basically, budgets should address the needs of each gender in the economy in such a way that no gender is significantly deficient than the other. In this discussion, we will look at why more than 100 countries are trying out gender budgeting and what could be achieved with this new approach. First of all, we lets identify the challenges of a unified budget.
Budgets hit each gender differently
The challenge with national budgets is that they are made for everyone - whether male or female. But then, each gender that makes up the economy are faced with unique obligations, circumstances, opportunities and responsibilities. Just as children in a household have unique needs, so are the genders in the economy. We can understand this better with a real life example.
In many countries, girls are given less opportunities to attend formal education than boys. This is often so in many developing economies. The disparity is often significant. Now in such economy, government budgets for education would have less or no impact on the girl child because they are not allowed to go to school. The same issue is seen in work sector. For example, many small business owners in most places are male compared to female. If the government is making a policy to support entrepreneurs, they are in fact supporting more men than women.
The above example illustrate the inequality that exists between men and women in the same economy. Of course the above examples show that the male gender has an upper hand. But then, it is not always the case. There are still cases where the female gender dominates a particular sector of the economy. But the insight above is to make it clear that each gender faces a different realities when it comes to economic impact.
Thus when governments and policy makers present a unified budget to be passed into law without considering gender disparities, one part of the economy might flourish while another part suffers. Balancing the two genders and ensuring fairness in budgeting would require taking into consideration the unique situations each face hence, gender budgeting.
Gender budgeting and equality
Gender equality is at the core of any discussions of economy. The female gender is almost always at some disadvantage than the male gender. It could be the other way round. But then, it is important to note that each government policy such as those in budgeting often have results that are not desired because of gender.
If policy makers stick with the unified budget as is the case in many economies, it simply means that some genders or elements of the society are unintentionally placed at economic disadvantage. And if this has been the case over a long period of time, some members of the society might be blocked or hindered from achieving their full potentials because of gender. Thus, gender budgeting could solve a lot of problems in the economy and bolster growth.
A lot could be achieved through gender budgeting
With gender budgeting, policy makers could easily see beyond the surface problems everyone faces. Inside each gender group, there are deeper challenges that affect the economy. Below are two problems that gender budgeting could solve:
- Identify unintended effects of a budget: It might be easy to see the intended impacts of every budget. For example, if there is bigger budget for the education sector, there might be better outcomes for every student like improved education facilities and more qualified teachers. It would be all too easy for policy makers to point to these positives as the intended impact. But that is not where the problem lies. The problem lies in the negative things that might happen as a result of the budget policies. This is where the work is.
Policy makers would thus begin by trying to evaluate the untended impacts of a budget. They have to identify negative situations that would exist in a gender group as a result of the unified budget. When these challenges are pointed out, it would be all too easy to see how that sector of the economy is affected by such policies. Often times, there would be need to adjust the budget in order to cover up the unintended results of a budget.
- Re-allocate resources to areas of deficiency: The work does not end in identifying weaknesses. A practical gender-based budget would try to address the issues raised. This would mean making sure that more resources are allocated to areas of the economy where a specific gender is lacking. For example in the case of the education sector where the girl child is not allowed to go to school. It is a gender gap. Policy makers might decide to solve this problem by allocating extra resources to cater for the girl child.
Policy makers in a country would decide how best to tackle the weaknesses that gender budgeting identified. They might decide to balance the budget more by taking resources from the flourishing gender and assigning them to the gender that is deficient. They might also decide to allocate extra funds to the gender that is lacking. Whichever way they choose, addressing the weaknesses created by a budget is what gender budgeting is all about.
Finally
Gender budgeting could help an economy grow faster and more uniformly.
With a robust budget decision making process in place, adding a gender perspective need not be laborious. Finance ministries should already be looking at WHO is impacted by a policy - this is just to add the gender dimension. source
Once the gender aspect is part of the entire budgeting process, then that economy is sure to grow and develop uniformly and gender inequality would not be so much of a problem.
Reference
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