Fifth Global Forum on Re-Inventing Government Mexico City, Mexico. November 3-7, 2003

1. Fifth Global Forum on Re-Inventing GovernmentMexico City, Mexico.November 3-7, 2003 Politics, Good Governance and Gender; Gender Budgeting Experiences in Three African Countries Winnie Byanyima MP (Uganda) wbyanyima@parliament.go.ug

2. States, Democracy and Gender • States not gender-neutral. Dynamic institutions that construct & legitimise gender identities, relations, inequalities. • Democracy not defined in gender terms. Democracies without women & democracies where men/boys benefit more from state opportunities e.g education, jobs, contracts, subsidies etc • International/national strategies to increase women’s representation & make states deliver gender equitable services.

3. Accountability and Gender • Accountability discussions about preventing corruption & effective & efficient delivery of public services. • Vertical & horizontal accountability • Accountability for gender equity in allocations & in service delivery weak or absent; vertically or horizontally.

4. What is Gender Budgeting? • Not separate budgets but audit tools to enhance vertical & horizontal accountability for gender equity in budgets. • Also used to gender analyse macro-economic policy. • examination of budgets to determine likely impacts on women and men, girls and boys from different social and economic groups.

5. What’s the Theoretical Basis of Gender Budgeting? • Gender is a social category, like class and race, which also cross-cut gender. • Gender Analysis; analyse/plan for all people, women & men, girls & boys, all backgrounds. • Gender Equality; in capabilities, in economic opportunities to have access and control over vital resources, in security from violence, and having agency to influence decisions that affect one.

6. Theoretical Basis (continued) • Women & men play important roles but placed and remunerated differently in economy. • Artificial separation of public (market & government) and private (mostly household & community) work hides care economy, cheats women of the rewards for their labour & undermines their economic and social status, results in resource misallocation, inefficiencies in economy.

7. Gender Budgets therefore; • Highlight definite but different contributions of women&men to economy incl. care economy. • Expose linkages and trade-offs between household and market economy, • Call for creative ways of recognising, counting and rewarding women’s unpaid labour & for equitable sharing of budget. • About rights, efficiency & accountability.

8. One Methodology; Rhonda Sharp • Gender-Specific Expenditures; analysis exposes commitment to addressing & removing gender-specific constraints. • Expenditures to achieve equity in public service; assesses commitment to institutional transformation, questions biases of policy-makers/implementors • All other mainstream expenditures; likely gender impacts of policies and allocations analysed. Exposes ´costs´ of hidden economy.

9. Expanding Democratic Politics & Promoting Good Governance • GBIs enhance substantive representation of women in legislatures. • Strengthen participatory & accountable budgeting. Citizens can use GB techniques to engage with budget decision-makers. • Legislators can use GB tools to increase their oversight of whole budgeting process. • Can be used to promote cost-effective, honest, equitable service delivery by citizens and politicians.

10. How Can GBs Strengthen legislative Oversight ? • Can increase effectiveness of public spending.(e.g. through beneficiary assessments). • Can increase accountability to poor women and girls (e.g. by linking expenditures to laws/commitments) and expose corruption (e.g.through time use analysis, revenue incidence analysis, public expenditure tracking). • Can increase transparency by requiring disaggregated data/other info for impact assessment and by requiring re-formating of budgets to enable gender analysis & advocacy.

11. How Can GB Strengthen Participatory Democracy? • GBIs are usually partnerships to share information, skills resources & build political power to cause change. • Involve legislators, govt planners, independent researchers, CS advocates & journalists. • Increase citizen participation in policy/budget making processes. • Can result in new/collaborative relationships between executive/legislatures and civil society actors.

12. Some Lessons Learnt • Political context is important for success. • Importance of institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming to anchor GB. • Partnerships sustain GBIs, but delicate management of collaboration and contention to aviod co-optation. • New devt frameworks like PRSP and budget reforms like MTEF, link resources to outcomes. Increase applicability of GB.

13. Some Lessons Learnt (contd) • GBIs call for a new approach to economics, call for redistribution. Resistance to change expected, is often subtle but real. • Resistance reduced through partnerships of sharing visions, attitudes, skills and information. • Incentives are needed to encourage change. • But lawful confrontation also builds pressure for change.

14. It is not the End. We Continue to Struggle and to Learn. Thank you for your Attention.