Gender budgeting

Gender budgeting means preparing budgets or analyzing them from a gender perspective. Also referred to as gender-sensitive budgeting, this practice does not entail dividing budgets for women. It aims at dealing with budgetary gender inequality issues, including gender hierarchies and the discrepancies between women's and men's salaries. At its core, gender budgeting is a feminist policy with a primary goal of re-orienting the allocation of public resources, advocating for an advanced decision-making role for women in important issues, and securing equity in the distribution of resources between men and women. Gender budgeting allows governments to promote equality through fiscal policies by taking analyses of a budget's differing impacts on the sexes as well as setting goals or targets for equality and allocating funds to support those goals. This practice does not always target intentional discrimination but rather forces an awareness of the effects of financial schemes on all genders.

OECD notes that gender budgeting is a way for governments to promote equality through the budget process against persistent gender disparities in education, employment, entrepreneurship, and public life opportunities and outcomes. Planning budgets with the promotion of gender equality in mind has the potential to help policymakers address a range of inequalities embedded in public policy and resource allocation.

Gender budgeting is set up to help close the gender gap. Gender budgeting helps achieve important standards of public financial management. Equality is a fundamental value of the European Union and a major goal of the European Commission. Equality for all and equality in every sense of the word play a central role in achieving a prosperous and social Europe.

Promoting equality is important not only from a moral argument but also from an economic perspective. Studies have highlighted that more equal economies benefit from higher employment rates in terms of income distribution and access to education and other services. Several studies have demonstrated that inequality has significant economic costs and that improving equality can boost EU growth. Budgets are an important means of increasing equity in all dimensions. Budget allocations are a central means of achieving these goals.