Budget for equality. What does it mean? It's simple. It means that men and women get the equal piece
of the public budget pie. Gender budgeting is a great tool to achieve gender equality.
Gender budgeting is looking at the budget from a gender lens so that the public funds
would be equally distributed upon the needs of women and men. It doesn't mean that there are two separate
budgets for women and men, it means budgets where gender perspective has been taken in
consideration in all the phases: from planning to implementation, in order to equally serve
the different needs of women and men. Let's see: should girls play handball with the same
ball size as the boys? Should women soldiers wear the same cut in size of uniforms as male soldiers?
Are unlit alleys and streets safe for women in the evenings? Should only women quit their jobs
to take care for the elderly and the children in the family? The answer is "no" because women
perform better when playing with suitable sports objects. Women should wear comfortable uniforms.
Women are more vulnerable to gender-based violence by walking alone at night.
Women usually sacrifice their careers in order to be the main family caregiver. Therefore we need to
work on creating an environment in which both women and men would have equal opportunities and
equally benefit from public funds and services. Gender budgeting always starts from a gender analysis
for raising and use of public money. It involves many actors including government officials, civil
society organizations, parliamentarians, gender advocates, academia and local communities. Within
the regional gender budgeting covering Southeast European countries and the Republic of Moldova, UN Women
targeted central and local governments to implement the gender equality commitments using
GRB tools to integrate gender inter-planning and budgeting at all levels. The program supported
governments to mainstream policies and budgets, and assisted both women and men to participate
in decision-making processes and understand what difference it can make in their daily life.
One of the examples at the local level in Albania shows how the partnership with a local CSO set the
GRB high in the agendas of the local municipal officials in Tirana, Vlora and Permet. Both women
and men attended participatory budgeting meetings between citizens and local municipal officials
which resulted with a number of recommendations to push for better and equitable funding allocations
to social services. All that resulted with new budgetary allocations such as housing support
of widow women and women heads of households, support to local centers for women victims
of violence, economic aid for families in need, support for multi-functional centers for youth,
girls and boys. These interventions helped local municipal officials to understand the
importance of gender budgeting. They recognized the significance of citizen participation, requested UN Women
support to further participatory processes and reinforce accountability and transparency of
local public expenditures. It actually doesn't take a big effort to make a big change.
But the change always requires a certain amount of time, engagement of different parties
and joint participation in decision-making processes. The 5th Sustainable Development Goal,
Gender Equality, states that women should have full and effective participation and equal
opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making. The role of governments
and budget policies is to provide everyone to get equal opportunities. Gender budgeting creates
societies in which both women and men have equal opportunities, having in mind their different needs.