Introduction
Gender budgeting has emerged as one of the key practical strategies to engender macroeconomic policies. It is based on two important developments in the 1980s and 1990s. Firstly, the work of feminist economists to overcome gender-blind economic theories and policies (Elson and Cagatay 2000) that result in what Bakker (1994) described as the âstrategic silenceâ, that is, the failure to acknowledge that economic policies are occurring on a gendered terrain and silencing womenâs experience. Secondly, local and transnational feminist movements from challenging the structural adjustment and restructuring policies have increasingly engaged in economic policy debates, advocating for different economic policy paradigms and the integration of gender equality perspectives in macroeconomic fiscal and monetary policies.
In this context, alliances between feminist researchers and movements focused on gender and economics as a key issue in the preparatory process towards the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The Beijing Platform for Action (PfA) was a springboard for institutionalising gender equality policy and gender analysis in public policy, including in public finance. The explicit proposition of integrating gender perspectives in budgetary decisions on policies and programmes, as well as on adequate financing of specific programmes to secure gender equality in the PfA constituted a broad international commitment to the novel idea of gender budgeting. The anchoring of gender budgeting is a result of successful alliance building among feminist academics, activists, and policymakers (Baksh and Harcourt 2015, 18). This is reflected in the inherent premise of gender budgeting: the engagement of feminists with the state, opening up institutional processes, increasing democratic participation, and improving the outcomes of public policy for women. In the decades since, gender budgeting has been developing incrementally as a strategy for advancing gender equality and womenâs rights, and securing the transformation of public policy institutions globally and in Europe.
Significance and Potential of Gender Budgeting
The emergence of gender budgeting marked a systematic conceptual basis for feminist engagement with macroeconomic policies and fiscal policies in particular. As a coherent proposal for policy change it provided an opportunity and anchor for feminist activism and advocacy on budgetary policies.
A central tenet of this engagement is the transformation of established economic models and economic policies, premised on concepts of the productive economy that render invisible the work of the reproductive economy, the provision of care and thereby the contribution of women to the economy. Care, the provision and receipt of care is a central focus in feminist economics as it at the heart of the transformative project of recasting gender relations on to a more equal and equitable basis, where the economic and social potential of women and men of diverse characteristics and gender identities and across the lifetime is not constrained or confined by narrowly prescribed gendered norms.
Societies globally are unequalâeconomically, socially, and politicallyâbased on gendered norms and assumptions of gendered roles, exacerbated by racialised prejudices and experiences of disability. These inequalities have been acknowledged through anti-discrimination legislation and responded to with protective and proactive public policy to address unequal access to the labour market, unequal pay in employment, and over-representation of men in public and political life and in decision-making. The extent to which policy has been informed by gender analysis and has been formulated explicitly to deliver more gender equal outcomes is variable. Without analysis and understanding of the gendered effects that influence and shape women and menâs experience of public services and economic expectations, policies will continue to reinforce gendered norms that produced the gendered effects of inequality.
The case for the systematic assessment of the gendered effects of all policy is based on the observation that policy designed for quite different ends can have important impacts on gender relations, power structures, and the socio-economic situation of women and men as well as on access to and control of resources. For example, analysis to date shows that the impacts of austerity measures imposed by European governments in pursuit of fiscal deficit reduction have been felt most acutely by women in reduced benefits and pensions, employment opportunities, access to public services, and the increase in their unpaid work (Bargawi et al. 2017; Bettio et al. 2013; Karamessini and Rubery 2014). We see the pattern of âdownloading risks to the kitchenâ (Elson 2002), putting a large share of the burden of economic and financial crises on women, prevalent in the era of structural adjustment policies in the 1980s and 1990s, still being repeated.
Many European countries, and the EU itself, have legal obligations to promote gender equality and provisions requiring that attention be given to the equality impacts of policy in order to reduce inequality and introduce mitigating measures. It is not always the case that this legislation is followed in practice. For example, the European Fiscal Pact that imposed austerity on EU countries and the even more restrictive reform policies imposed on poorer debtor countries were not subject to equality impact assessments (Bettio et al. 2013) and in practice increasing gender inequalities.
In addition to legal requirements to advance equality, it is also clear that the realisation of womenâs rights and human rights requires not just attention to inequality and the principle of non-discrimination, but the maximisation of available resources. The international human rights framework requires that states should consider the impact of inequalities on rights and, where necessary, take steps towards reducing inequalities and the impact of such on the realisation of human rights (Balakrishnan et al. 2016; Elson 2017). In this sense, gender equality is used in an emancipatory perspective, not merely closing gender gaps which might also be achieved by levelling down menâs socio-economic position, but rather a progressive realisation of womenâs and human rights mobilising maximum available resources.
Key Aims and Themes of the Book
The key themes of persisting unequal gender relations; economic, social, and political inequality; and the gendered nature of the dominant economic and institutional models permeate the development of gender budgeting (GB) and are the fundamental motivations for this book.
This book intends to inform policymakers, gender equality advocates, and feminist activists, on the mechanisms of gender budgeting, discuss the tensions inherent in conceptualising GB and putting it into practice, and to illustrate its implementation with examples from different locations involving different policy actors in the process. Informed by years of practice and the breadth of experience demonstrated by the contributors in this volume, we particularly aim to highlight that the tools, arguments, and evidence exist and reveal the benefits of gender budgeting as a strategic tool for the advancement of gender equality. As advocates for GB, our ambition is for its transformational potential to be realised in practice. That is why we emphasise the significance of its emancipatory potential and the promise of more open and transparent budgetary processes that commit to greater democratic participation. In pursuing that core goal, there is a careful balance to be struck between institutional commitment and implementation, and the institutionalisation of the concept and practice of GB whereby they become subsumed into the same dependencies of the institutions that GB is seeking to transform.
This raises questions about the actual achievements and impact of gender budgeting, a theme that is present throughout. Meaningful and sustainable impact on gender equality is not easily measurable or attributable to particular interventions. While there are no easy answers on how to strengthen impacts of GB work, it is clear that the continued engagement between government and outside actors, especially feminist civil society, academics, and advocates as well as parliamentarians plays a crucial role. Different forms of continued engagement with governments are crucial, in this continuous tension over budgets as a key site of political struggle over power, influence, and public resources, as evidenced throughout the book.
A further theme for the book that permeates the methodologies, case studies, and analysis of institutional and policy actions, is the dominant economic context of austerity across Europe. The financial crisis of 2008 onwards, and the response of governance institutions revealed not only economic crisis, but further breakdown of democratic processes and state sovereignty. As we have highlighted above, the actions at supragovernmental and state level had little regard for the gendered effects of economic austerity and the rolling back of public services and social security. This theme runs through the volume, highlighting key challenges to gender budgeting in the era of austerity, ending with the reflections by Antonella Picchio and the editorsâ conclusions.
The aims of the book are
- to provide a critical exploration on the historical and conceptual background to gender budgeting and the approaches to adoption and implementation in different parts of Europe over almost 20 years of activity;
- to provide a critical reflection of gender budgeting activity at different levels of government across a range of countries;
- to explore and reaffirm feminist engagement in gender analysis of budget processes and economic policy as valuable and purposeful form of feminist policy change in the advancement of gender equality.
The dominance of economic austerity and adjustment in Europe has characterised political economy and popular politics in Europe since 2008 and the global financial crash and responses to it. These realities are clearly in evidence in the case studies in this book. The dominance and consequences of budget reforms, significant cuts to public spending through assaults on social security and welfare spending across Europe are exposed in detail, with an exemplary focus on the experiences of Spain and Italy. The impact of these policies on womenâs incomes and socio-economic status have been laid bare in the analysis of civil society organisations such as the UK Womenâs Budget Group and the Platform for Action in Spain, among other civil society and academic activism.
The dynamics of adoption and implementation of GB are very different across European countries. For example, constitutional reform as a reaction to the banking crisis in Iceland was a principal driver of activity to adopt gender budgeting. Political change in the UK, with devolution to its member countries, has produced significant divergence in the framing and integration of gender analysis in budget process across the different levels of government. In Austria, constitutional reform also provided the opening for embedding GB into budgetary reform processes.
In many countries civil society activism and the significance of international learning and networks enabled gender budgeting, but experience also highlights another core principle of gender budgetingâand by extension gender equality policyâof the importance of ensuring an appropriate âfitâ conceptually and procedurally with local contexts. These principles are evident in experiences such as in Poland, the UK, Austria, and Spain and to lesser extent in Germany, Italy, and Iceland. In other countries, especially South Eastern and East...