The Political Economy of Women's Budgets in the South

The Political Economy of Women's Budgets

in the South

DEBBIE BUDLENDERCommunity Agency for Social Enquiry, Cape Town, South Africa

Summary. Ð Soon after the democratic elections of 1994, South Africa embarked on its ®rstwomen's budget exercise, a collaborative venture between nongovernmental organizations and theSouth African parliament. Some time later the South African government initiated its own exercisein gender analysis of the budget. The South African initiative has attracted a lot of interest fromaround the world. In a number of other countries governments and civil society players haveembarked on gender analysis exercises, often with strong support from international donors. Thispaper discusses the ways in which these exercises can assist in addressing gender issues, as well assome of the tensions involved. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. INTRODUCTION

Quite soon after the ®rst democratic electionsof 1994, South Africa embarked on its ®rstwomen's budget exercise. One of the inspira-tions for this initiative was the AustralianWomenÕs Budget (Sharp & Broomhill, 1998).This was a collaborative venture of civil society,in the form of nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) and the South African parliament.Some time later the South African governmentinitiated an exercise in gender analysis of thebudget. The government initiative is coordi-nated by the Department of Finance and servesas one of several pilots in the CommonwealthSecretariatÕs endeavor to engender macroeco-nomics (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1999).

For a range of reasons the South Africaninitiative has attracted a lot of interest fromaround the world. These reasons include therenewed interest internationally in gender issuesresulting from the 1995 Fourth World Confer-ence on Women held in Beijing as well as theworldÕs more general fascination with the SouthAfrican ``miracle.'' In a number of othercountries governments and civil society playershave embarked on gender analysis exercises,often with strong support from internationaldonors.

The Commonwealth pilots are in SouthAfrica, Sri Lanka and Barbados with a fourthpilot planned for Fiji. In Africa outside ofSouth Africa there are existing initiatives inNamibia (government), Tanzania (governmentand NGO), Uganda (parliament), Botswana

(government), Mozambique (government),Zimbabwe (academic) and Uganda (govern-ment), and a nascent exercise in Malawi(nongovernment). UNIFEM is supportingworkshops to enable these and other countriesin Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islandstates to learn from the experience of the SouthAfrican womenÕs budget initiatives and theCommonwealth Secretariat exercises(UNIFEM, 1998). The United KingdomTreasury in 1998 co-hosted a one-day work-shop on the topic with the academic WomenÕsBudget group. Elson mentions further initia-tives in Switzerland (government), Canada andthe United States (NGOs) (Elson, 1999, p. 10).

This paper discusses the ways in which theseexercises can assist in addressing gender issues,as well as some of the tensions involved. Muchof the discussion draws heavily on the SouthAfrican experience. This is the one best knownto the author, as well as the one which is atpresent most wide-ranging. The paper alsodraws on experience in training governmentand nongovernmental groups in other countriesof the South. This experience is used in somecases to con®rm the South African experienceand in others to show how di�erent social,economic and political conditions a�ect thepotential and outcome of the exercises.

2. WHAT ARE WOMEN'S BUDGETS?

WomenÕs budget exercises, despite theirmisleading name, do not propose separate

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1365

budgets for women. Rather the exercisesinvolve a gender-sensitive analysis of govern-ment budgets. Two points can be noted brie¯yat this stage and are discussed further below.First, the exercise involves analysis rather thanformulation of budgets. This analysis can thenconstitute the basis for formulation or amend-ment of budgets. Second, the analysis does notfocus only on that portion of a budget seen aspertaining to gender issues or women. In fully-¯edged form womenÕs budget exercises examineall sectoral allocations of government for theirdi�erential impact on women, men, girls andboys. Ideally, they go further to look at theimpact on subgroups of the basic gender-agegroupings.

The previous paragraph refers to ``womenÕsbudgets''Ðthe term used in Australia andSouth Africa. As discussed further below, theexercises would be better termed ``genderanalysis of budgets.'' Just as the ``women'' inthe name is misleading, so is the word ``bud-get.'' A more accurate description wouldinclude the words ``policy,'' ``programs'' and``performance'' as well as budget. Gender-sen-sitive analysis of budgets proceeds from theassumption that budgets are an outcome of aprocess which starts much earlier.

Gender-sensitiveÐor indeed anyÐanalysisof budgets needs to start with an understandingof the situation of women and men of thecountry concerned in relation to the sectorunder review. For a Ministry of Labor, forexample, this would involve an analysis of thelevels of labor market participation andunemployment, the industrial and occupationaldistribution of women and men, as well aspatterns of involvement in unpaid laborwhether in the home, ®elds or elsewhere.

The second step is an analysis of sectoralpolicy. This step asks whether policy correctlyaddresses the situation previously described. Incrude terms, one needs to know whether thepolicy is likely to exacerbate any gender gapsidenti®ed, leave them as they are, or reduce them.

If policy is considered adequate, one can thenlook at the budget to see whether adequate®nancial and other resources have been allo-cated to implement the policy. The questionmight seem trivial but is not so. ManygovernmentsÐperhaps particularly those whoare lavish in their commitments to `ìmprove''societyÐmake more policies than they are ableto implement immediately. A test of the level ofcommitment to di�erent aspects is which poli-cies are then underfunded.

Finally, one needs to look at how theresources have been utilized. In the simplestcases, this will involve asking how manywomen and men have bene®ted from a partic-ular service and at what cost. The answers canprovide assessments in terms of distributionand equity as well as e�ciency.

The four steps above are explained withrespect to expenditure. Every budget has twosidesÐexpenditure and revenue. The way inwhich government collects revenueÐthroughdi�erent types of taxes, from donors, throughuser fees, asset sales or borrowingÐhasgendered implications. So, too, does themanner in which government exempts certaincategories or institutions, individuals or activi-ties from taxes. There has been less genderanalysis of revenue to date than of expenditure,but the situation-policy-budget-performancesequence would be the same for both.

The brief explanation above makes it clearthat womenÕs budgets are primarily monitoringand audit exercises. They serve the purpose, forgovernment, of providing feedback on perfor-mance. They serve the purpose for thoseoutside government of greater transparencyand accountability. For those both inside andoutside government the exercise should provideinformation which allows better decision-mak-ing as to how policies need to be adjusted orchanged and where resources need to be real-located.

In some countries the question has beenasked why one need focus on gender at all. InSouth Africa the initiative has sparked a rangeof copy-cat exercises, such as childrenÕs budget,disability budgets, and pro-poor budgets. Thesefoci re¯ect the general concern in the countrywith what are perceived as disadvantagedgroups. In Uganda the initiative is spearheadedby the parliamentary WomenÕs Caucus, a bodywhich includes representatives of groupsregarded as disadvantaged in that country. InBangladeshÐand perhaps other countriesÐpro-poor budget initiatives have been estab-lished which ask some of the same questions asthe gender budget exercises.

The South African womenÕs budget itself isnot concerned with women per se. It isconcerned with women to the extent that theyare disadvantaged. As such, it attempts todisaggegate beyond gender. One of the obviousfurther divisions in South Africa is race.Further signi®cant factors include geography(in terms of the rural±urban split as wellas province) and age. Each such split has

WORLD DEVELOPMENT1366

implications for budgetary allocations. Theprovincial di�erences have implications for thedivision of resources both because of thedi�erences in the relative poverty of citizens ofdi�erent areas, as well as the fact that provincesfell under di�erent political dispensationsduring apartheid. The rural±urban di�erenceshave implications for industrial, land, agricul-tural and infrastructural policies. The agedi�erences have implications for policies inhealth, education, welfare and other sectors.

The focus on multiple disaggregation can beseen as re¯ecting post-structuralist and post-modern concerns in social science. JacklynCock and Alison Bernstein provide an inter-esting discussion on the variety of ways inwhich the question of di�erence and diversity,and related practices of a�rmative action, areunderstood and addressed in the United Statesand South Africa. At a theoretical level theyaddress the paradigms of materialism and post-structuralism and how these get interpreted andused politically. Their analysis implicitlysupports the approach of the WomenÕs Budgetexercise. They argue that their

central argument is for social scienti®c analysis to fo-cus less on di�erence and more on the disadvantagesthat it involves. . . in view of the tendency for the cur-rent preoccupation with understanding Ôdi�erenceÕ todisplace the concern with addressing inequality anddisadvantage (Cock & Bernstein, 1998, pp. 17±18).

Rhonda Sharp has devised an analyticalframework which provides a good startingpoint both in understanding what genderanalysis of budgets involves, and in taking the®rst steps along the road. The Sharp frame-work proposes that the analyst consider abudget in terms of three categories whichtogether make up 100% of the budget. Thethree categories, with examples to explainthem, are:

ÐExpenditures speci®cally targeted at gen-der issues or women, such as womenÕs healthprograms, domestic violence counselling formen and special employment programs forunemployed women with young children.ÐExpenditures related to equal employmentopportunities within the civil service, forexample, creche facilities for employeesÕ chil-dren and paid parental leave.ÐGeneral or mainstream expendituresavailable to both women and men, but ana-lyzed for their di�erential gender impact, forexample analysis of the users of primaryhealth care, government-supported literacy

classes, and agricultural subsidies (see Budle-nder & Sharp, 1998, for further discussionand examples).

The framework has proved useful as apedagogic tool in a number of ways. Inparticular, by ®rst separating out the ®rst twocategories, the framework forces people toconfront their conception of mainstreaming.This seems necessary for, all too often, it seemsthat the word is widely used but often poorlyunderstood within government beyond thecon®nes of the gender or womenÕs machinery.

The Sharp framework has also proved usefulin structuring reports of gender analysis ofbudgets. In South Australia, for example,sectoral sta� were required to report to theO�ce on the Status of Women according to thethree categories. More recently the frameworkhas been used as the basis of exercises duringtraining sessions for government o�cials.

The standardized framework provides a``formula'' which accords more easily with abureaucratic approach to tasks than moreopen-ended questions. Nevertheless, the type ofissues raised are still very di�erent from thoseusually addressed by ®nancial sta�. Manyappear to ®nd the issues intriguing, but struggleto see how they can incorporate them into dailywork if the latter does not require them to askquestions about impact.

3. THE SOUTH AFRICAN INITIATIVES

As noted above, South Africa has twoinitiativesÐone involving NGOs and parlia-mentarians, and the other within nationalgovernment and led by the Ministry of Finance.When the Ministry of Finance was ®rstapproached about starting an initiative, BudgetO�ce o�cials asked why this was necessary ifthere was already a respected initiative outsidegovernment. The response both then and nowwas that the two initiatives have di�erent roles.

The inside government exercise is primarilyabout management and accountability. It isabout government itself being aware of, andmonitoring, the gendered impact of its policiesand budgets as well as about its reporting on itsactivities to parliament and civil society.

The outside government exercise is aboutinvolving citizens in the important policy areaof budgets, an area from which many peopleÐand particularly the disadvantagedÐhave longbeen excluded. The outside government exer-cise is also about oversight and critique, both

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOMEN'S BUDGETS 1367

by parliament and civil society more broadly.Those involved in the outside governmentexercise are probably all staunch members ofthe African National Congress (ANC), which isthe majority party in the country. Nevertheless,there is a clear recognition that governmentitself cannot be expected to admit loudly to``failures'' in its reports. Rather one hopes foran honest acknowledgement of weaknesses,and of how much still needs to be done inrespect of gender equity. The outside govern-ment exercise provides the opportunity for astronger critical voice.

The outside government exercise is the older,and stronger, of the two initiatives. Over theyears it has involved a broad range of people indi�erent roles. For the research which formsthe core of the work, it draws on people fromother NGOs, research and policy institutionsand universities. The research is overseen by areference group which involves others involvedin the speci®c sectors, whether from NGOs,universities, the national, provincial or locallegislatures or government. By adopting thismethod, the initiative has spread both theconcept of gender analysis of budgets and someexpertise in undertaking the analysis.

At this stage the outside government initia-tive has published ®ve books. Four of thesebooks (Budlender, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999) aredetailed, and fairly academic, analyzes ofdi�erent budgets. The ®rst three between themcover all 27 sectoral votes in the nationalbudget, as well as some additional chapters onpublic sector employment, taxation, andeconomic theory. The fourth book looks atdonor funding to government, local govern-ment budgets, and the impact of sectoralbudgets on employment creation.

The ®fth book, Money Matters: Women andthe Government Budget (Hurt & Budlender,1998), was published in 1998. The bookcomprises 10 chapters, which are simpli®edversions of chapters in the ®rst two books. It isintended for a second-language English readerwith 10 years of education. Money Matters wasproduced out of a recognition that the moredetailed books would be read by only a smallproportion of the population given low levels ofliteracy and numeracy. The attempts to popu-larize the work have been taken further in 1999with the development of workshop materialswhich can be used with audiences of even lowerlevels of education. The materials, which arecurrently being piloted, are designed to be usedboth in stand-alone workshops and as sessions

in workshops which do not focus exclusively ongender analysis of budgets.

Both the inside and outside governmentinitiatives have used the Sharp framework ofthree categories. Separating out the secondcategory of expenditure as only one of threecategories has proved particularly useful in theSouth African context. After the 1994 electionsthere was much interest in changing both thegender and race pro®le of public and privatesector employment. The public sector was seenas particularly important given the opportu-nities for decisive action and the part whichthe public sector could play as role model. Thechange was certainly necessary and has, infact, proceeded quite far. The WomenÕsBudget Initiative was one of the voices ensur-ing that the government e�orts in this respectfocus on race and gender simultaneously,rather than on promoting white women andblack men.

The danger for the WomenÕs Budget Initia-tive lay in the relative ease with which analysisof the gender composition of public serviceemployment could be conducted. This could,too easily, result in gender analysis of budgetsfocusing almost exclusively on this aspect. Itwould be too easy to focus on the 1.2 millionemployees concerned rather than on the moreimportant question of how the governmentbudget was a�ecting the other 40 million pluscitizens who were potential bene®ciaries ofgovernment expenditure. The danger wasaverted by allocating a researcher to coverpublic service employment throughout nationaland provincial government during the ®rst yearand asking sectoral researchers to focus onother issues in their own chapters.

Focusing on category one expenditure alsoholds dangers in that an agency can, whileallocating a highly visible amount for gender-speci®c activities, neglect examining other partsof its budget in terms of gender. The categorycan, however, also provide a golden opportu-nity for lobbying and advocacy, as is happeningcurrently in South Africa around domesticviolence.

The countryÕs domestic violence act wasamended in late 1998 so as to provide addedprotection and remedies for people who areabused in the domestic situation. After pressurefrom civil society and parliamentarians, theMinister of Justice announced that his depart-ment had allocated R2 million for implemen-tation of the new Act. But when asked how thisR2 million was to be spent, he was unable to


provide any details. An NGO has taken up thechallenge and initiated research into how thisand the other departments involved should beallocating both mainstream and speci®c budgetlines to ensure that the law provides the envis-aged protection.

A government budget is a central tool ofmacroeconomic policy. The South Africaninitiative has not, however, seen itself asdirectly, or primarily, addressing macroeco-nomic questions. The Initiative has, muchmore, arisen out of a concern with the directionand success of policy formulation and imple-mentation at sectoral level. Further, from thestart the outside government initiative focusedon reprioritizationÐon how the availablemoney could be better used to target thosemost in need. The focus on reprioritizationre¯ected that of the new ANC government.Within the initiative it was also seen as coun-tering a perception that women activists weresimply asking for ``more.'' Instead the initiativetried to suggest which government activitiescould be cut down so as to provide resourcesfor programs and projects seen as more gender-sensitive.

Inevitably, however, the initiative has dealtwith broader macroeconomic issues. The needfor this became especially pressing when thegovernment, in mid-1996, introduced theGrowth, Employment and Redistribution(GEAR) strategy as its new economic policy.The government maintained that GEAR in noway contradicted the Reconstruction andDevelopment Programme (RDP) which hadbeen seen as the core government policy upuntil then. Others were less sanguineÐsomeseeing GEAR as a thinly-disguised structuraladjustment program which the country wasimposing on itself. The PresidentÕs statementthat GEAR was ``non-negotiable'' fuelled crit-icism of the policy as it so clearly contradictedthe new dispensationÕs promotion of partici-pation and accountability.

The introduction to the Second Women'sBudget commented brie¯y on GEAR (Budlen-der, 1997). The introduction noted that the newpolicy included virtually the same elements asGEAR, but that the focus in terms of priorityhad been shifted to de®cit reduction. It ques-tioned the fact that the model on which theprojections were based had not been madepublic, with the result that it could not beexamined. It raised concern as to what wouldfall away shouldÐas was likelyÐnot all ele-ments of the policy be achievable.

The following year, the Third Women'sBudget included a chapter which covered theDepartment of Finance.1 This chapter notedthat the GEAR strategy ``does not adopt anygender perspective on economic policy''(Valodia, 1998, p. 93). It went on to examine inmore detail what some of the key aspects of thepolicyÐexport growth, investment, growth andemployment, and monetary policyÐmightmean for di�erent groups of women and mengiven the social and economic pro®le of thecountry. The discussion drew heavily onprevious work in the First Women's Budget inwhich the author of this chapter had looked atthe policies and budget of the Department ofTrade and Industry, including the likely e�ectof trade liberalization (Valodia, 1996). Theconclusion to the examination of GEAR in theDepartment of Finance chapter was that `ànexpansionary macroeconomic strategy couldwell be more advantageous to women thanGEAR'' (Valodia, 1998, p. 100).

The most visible result of the inside govern-ment initiative has been the inclusion ofdiscussion of gender issues in documents tabledon budget day in 1998 and 1999. Unlike inAustralia, it was agreed that these discussionswould be published in the available documentsrather than separately so as to promote arecognition that gender is a mainstream issue.

Less visibly, there has been a limited amountof work in respect of the medium-term expen-diture framework (MTEF). The MTEF is athree-year rolling budget for national andprovincial governments which, three years afterits ®rst introduction, is still very much `ùnderdevelopment.'' One of the aspects which hasparticular signi®cant for gender analysis is thefocus on program or performance budgeting.This approach focuses not only on moneyamounts, but also on physical outputs andoutcomes i.e. measures of di�erent servicesdelivered and the number of people bene®ting.The elaboration proposed in terms of genderanalysis is that these outputs and outcomesneed to be disaggregated, not only by gender,but also by other factors. This has beenaccepted by the Department of Finance and isre¯ected in their instructions to other depart-ments. What remains to be seen is how far thedi�erent departments are able and willing to dothis.

The new MTEF has many di�erent aims,including greater macroeconomic control,greater coordination between the di�erentspheres of government and greater transpar-


ency. In respect of the latter, the early publi-cation of three-year proposals allows for somecomment on departmental plans severalmonths before the budget is tabled. There arealso proposals for further parliamentarypowersÐsomething for which the outsidegovernment initiative has lobbied since thebeginning. Even with these amendments,however, parliamentary powers will remainlimited.

4. INSIDE OR OUTSIDE?

South Africa is not the only country withinitiatives both inside and outside government.In Tanzania, too, there are government andNGO initiatives. In Mozambique, while theongoing initiative is situated within govern-ment, the ®rst workshop for Ministry o�cialswas co-facilitated by an NGO director who alsoadvises the President on gender issues.

The donors providing support for the initia-tives promote a focus on government becausegovernments are the primary (or sole) recipi-ents of their funds and because they seegovernment having more power to e�ect realchange. Within the ambit of government, theCommonwealth initiatives and Sida-fundedinitiatives in Namibia and Tanzania have hadthe Ministry of Finance as the lead agency,while the UN agencies have sometimes workedclosely with the gender or womenÕs machinery.The Commonwealth and Sida have attemptedto promote co-ownership of the initiatives byMinistries of Finance and the womenÕsmachinery but a variety of forces have meantthat the latterÕs role has often been minimal.These forces include the relative weakness andunderresourcing of this machinery, weaknesses(if not absence) of hard ``technical'' skills, aswell as a focus on small-scale projects ratherthan policy. (It should be noted that thesefactors need not be the fault of the incumbents,who often seem almost set up to fail.)

Ministries of Finance, on the other hand, arealmost always among the most powerful ofagencies in any government. They are oftenable toÐand doÐdirect and control the otheragencies in many ways, and are both reveredand hated for their power. This power can be ofadvantage to gender analysis initiatives. Thedrawback is that Finance Ministries will oftenbe underendowed with people who understandgender issues and their relevance for theMinistryÕs work. The o�cialsÕ training in

economics is unlikely to have included genderand other social issues. It is even less likely tohave included the concepts of the care economyand unpaid labor which are central to a properunderstanding of gendered roles and the impactof policy on women and men.

The problem, however, is not con®ned toFinance. Elson notes that in the Australianinitiative, which involved all agencies, one ofthe weaknesses was a widespread lack ofunderstanding of gender issues (Elson, 1999,p. 5). Experience in a range of countries hassuggested that even statistical agencies are oftenunaware of the import and implications of thedata they produce. An advantage of workingwith Finance is that this ministry generallyattracts some of the most educated, intelligentand ambitious government o�cials in anycountry.

In South Africa the relative strength ofgovernment support of and interest in genderanalysis re¯ects a broader interest in the societyas a whole. The post-apartheid constitution is,predictably, ®rmly founded on the notion ofequality. Less predictably, the routine call is fora ``nonracist and nonsexist'' South Africa,rather than a focus on race alone. The womenÕsbudget initiative, with its practical focus, hasattracted increasing attention over the last fewyears as the new government and its supportersrecognized the di�culties of moving fromslogans to reality in implementing the manychanges fought for during the years of apart-heid as well as the broader aspirations of themovement for gender equity.

In addition to an overall conducive situation,and one in which change is welcomed, in SouthAfrica the Finance Ministry has been led by awoman director-general (permanent secretary)and a woman deputy minister. Both thesewomen have publicly aligned themselves withthe initiative as a way of promoting redistri-bution and assisted it in di�erent ways. Fromoutside, the Ministry has been subjected toongoing pressure and encouragement, particu-larly from the parliamentary Committee on theQuality of Life and Status of Women.

While it would be wrong to assume that allwomen are gender-sensitive, experience showsthat several of the countries which haveembarked on these initiatives have women inpowerful positions. Thus in Mozambique thetwo top o�cials in the Budget O�ce arewomen. In Sri Lanka, too, the chief o�cial is awoman. In at least one other country with agender budget initiative the top o�cial is


married to a gender activist and has himselfattended activities addressing gender issues.

As far as outside government initiatives areconcerned, Elson suggests that parliamentari-ans and NGOs can contribute by:

ÐMobilizing for gender-sensitive budgetanalysis;ÐContributing to governmentÕs analysis byproducing relevant information and re-search; andÐConducting ``shadow'' or ``parallel'' ana-lyzes (Elson, 1999, p. 9).

In South Africa both parliament and NGOshave certainly played an important role inencouraging this type of analysis. In Tanzania,too, the NGO exercise spurred on governmentand donors to start a parallel initiative.

There are, however, limitations on involve-ment from outside. The South African outside-government initiative has depended on ongoingsupport from foreign donors, although someactorsÐboth government and nongovern-mentÐwithin the country are now commis-sioning, and paying for, smaller studies. It hasalso involved major commitments of time fromthe researchers and others involved in produc-ing the ``parallel'' analyzes.

Those outside have also had to recognize theroles and possibilities for in¯uence and inter-vention of di�erent players. In most countrieseven parliamentarians have very limited say inbudget allocations. The budget estimates areusually tabled in ®nished form very near theend of the ®nancial year. In South Africa andmany other countries parliamentarians havethe choice of either accepting the budget as is,or rejecting it in its totality. They do not havethe option of increasing, decreasing or evenshu�ing allocations.

5. WOMEN OR GENDER?

The Australian exercises were all known bythe generic name of womenÕs budget andproduced womenÕs budget statements. TheSouth African extragovernmental exercise,similarly, is known as the WomenÕs BudgetInitiative and has produced a series of ``wom-enÕs budget'' books (Budlender, 1996, 1997,1998, 1999).

Some of the more recent initiatives in othercountries have chosen to style themselves asgender budget initiatives. The choice re¯ectsthe general move among gender and develop-ment theorists away from women-in-develop-

ment to gender-and-development. South Africahas, however, stuck to the original name. Thischoice is echoed in the names of the recentlyestablished parliamentary Committee on theImprovement of the Quality of Life and Statusof Women as well as the O�ce on the Status ofWomen situated in the PresidentÕs O�ce. Atleast one of the countries which followed SouthAfricaÕs leadÐMozambiqueÐstyles its inside-government initiative as O Orcamento dosMulheres, a direct translation of womenÕsbudget.

The South African initiative, despite thename, strives for a gendered analysis ratherthan a simple focus on women. Maintaining theoriginal name in part re¯ects a desire to stick tothe name by which the exercise has becomeknown both in the country and beyond. Thereasons extend beyond this. First, in multilin-gual societies such as South Africa, and espe-cially countries with varying levels of educationand knowledge of English, the term ``gender''confuses and intimidates as often as it enlight-ens. Second, the ``women'' in the title under-lines the fact that, in the relations betweenwomen and men which constitute gender, it iswomen who come out second best in theoverwhelming majority of cases. The ``women''thus stresses the overall emphasis of the project,which is to focus on how government alloca-tions should prioritize the disadvantaged.

The focus on gender, on the other hand, hasmany strong points, but also has potentialweaknesses. In at least some countries it seemsthat the term gender is being used to dilute thefocus on disadvantage. In some cases theconstant reference to women and men depo-liticizes the issue by almost suggesting thatthere is no bias or that, if there is bias, thepatterns are haphazard. This understandinghas certainly emerged among governmentemployees who have participated in the genderbudget analysis training exercises in severalcountries.

The argument sometimes goes together witha simplistic call for 50±50 equality. Such a callignores the real di�erences between women andmen which result from biology, roles as well asother causes. The approach easily falls into acall for formal equality, or equality of oppor-tunity, rather than the stronger substantiveequality, which looks for equality of outcome.For equality of outcome, policy needs to takeinto account di�erences in needs and di�erencesin starting points, and needs to providecompensation in one for or another.


In some cases the call for a focus on genderrather than women goes further than simplyasserting haphazard patterns of disadvantage.In at least one country in which the genderbudget analysis has been introduced, the meninvolved continually noted their perceptionthat men have become, or are becoming, thedisadvantaged. Most commonly proponentspoint to the higher enrolment of girls or womenin education which now prevails in a number ofCaribbean and Southern African countries.The examples o�ered in favor of the disad-vantaged men thesis usually do not go farbeyond the education one, but are neverthelessimportant. They need to be taken note of bothso as to address the reality of the situation, aswell as to examineÐand challenge if neces-saryÐthe claims that male disadvantagepervades the society more generally. The typeof detailed sectoral analysis involved in genderanalysis of budgets provides the opportunityfor just such a focus.

Some feminists who favor a return to the useof ``women'' rather than ``gender'' claim thatwhen boys and men drop out of education, thedisadvantages are self-in¯icted. They claim thatthe disadvantages do not therefore merit thesame attention as the structural barriers whichimpede the progress of women and girls. Thisargument is di�cult to sustain. What, forexample, is the di�erence between this maledropout reaction to societal pressures and thefemale reaction where only small numbers ofwomen register for engineering studies evenwhere the opportunities present themselves?More pragmatically, feminists need to payattention to male dropouts if only to thinkabout the implications for women when themen in their lives are disillusioned and hostile.

6. OTHER BUDGET INITIATIVES

In 1996 a meeting of CommonwealthFinance Ministers endorsed a recommendationof the Commonwealth Ministers Responsiblefor WomenÕs A�airs, to initiate a program onengendering budgets as the ®rst step in engen-dering macroeconomic policy. The programwas to involve pilot programs in four countries,one in each of the Commonwealth regions. InSouth Africa the pilot would involve an in-government exercise to parallel the alreadyexisting outside-government one. The othercountries were Sri Lanka, Barbados and Fiji.

All but Fiji have at this stage conducted someform of gendered analysis of budgets.

In addition to the crosscountry Common-wealth program, a number of individual coun-tries have embarked on their own exercises.These include Namibia, Mozambique andBotswana (inside government), Tanzania(inside and outside) and Uganda (in parlia-ment). In late 1998 the British Treasury co-hosted a one-day workshop on gender analysisof budgets. The Treasury has, before and sincethe workshop, had discussions with a smallWomenÕs Budget grouping in that country. Thelatter exercise, as well as initiatives in Canadaand the United States, suggest that genderanalysis of budgets is not something relevantonly to developing countries.

The spread of the initiative bears testimonyto the potential for di�erent countries to learnfrom each other as well as the di�culties indoing so. As expected, there are di�erences inthe situation of women and men in each ofthese countries, even though the majority aresituated in Southern Africa. There are alsodi�erences in the shape and format of theirbudget, the arrangement of ministries, thelevels of concern with gender issues, and so on.Budgets themselves are not simple things. Theinstitutional and other arrangements whichsurround budgets are even less simple. Mostpeople embarking on gender analysis ofbudgets have their time cut out understandinghow things work in their own country withoutthe added complication of understanding thesimilarities and di�erences with other countries.

Nevertheless, there are also some similaritieswhich suggest the strong in¯uence of theinternational agencies in macroeconomic and®nancial issues, including budgets. At the mostobvious level, there is a concern around issuescentral to structural adjustment programsÐreduction or containment of the size of the civilservice, reduction in debt, privatization andcommercialization, promotion of an openeconomy and so on. Each of these has genderedimplications for the budget and related policies.Perhaps less obvious to people not involved inbudget analysis are trends in budgeting. Oneexample here would be performance orprogram budgeting. This involves a concernwith `òutputs'' in terms of delivery and `òut-comes'' in the form of changes in the situationrather than simply with control over monetaryamounts.

As noted above in the discussion on SouthAfrica, the shift to program budgeting and


gender analysis of budgets should have asymbiotic relationship. On the one hand,program budgeting is in line with the focus ofgender analysis on deliveryÐon what budgetsachieve or deliver. Conversely, the disaggrega-tion and more in-depth analysis advocated bygender analysis strengthen the insights obtainedfrom program budgeting. Several countrieshave acknowledged this symbiosis by incorpo-rating the need for gender and other disaggre-gations in their budget guidelines for lineministries.

There are, however, also drawbacks in thisand other shifts. Many countries appear in aconstant state of ¯ux trying to implement thischange together with a host of other innova-tions and `ìmprovements'' suggested by localand visiting experts, consultants and advisers.A state of ¯ux provides opportunities in thatsystems are less rigid and so more adaptable toincorporate additional aspects. On the otherhand, ministry o�cials can be so overwhelmedwith the ongoing changes that they cannotcontemplate another one. Further, innovationsconducive to gender analysis stand the dangerof being wiped out when the next change comesinto e�ect.

The South African example has bothadvantages and disadvantages in this respect.Post-apartheid society is characterized by thedesire of the new rulers and the majority of thepopulation for wide-ranging change, or indeedtransformation. Many analysts are now sayingthat one of the weaknesses of the post-apart-heid era has been the attempt to institute toomany wide-ranging changes at the same time.Trainees in other countries will usually agreewith the need for transformation in the SouthAfrican case, and usually accept that thisshould incorporate gender-related elements. Alltoo often, however, South Africa is labeled as aspecial case which has little bearing on theirown situation.

Resistance to seeing the need for change isparticularly likely in more stable societies whichdeliver reasonable levels of services to a largeproportion of their citizens. The view is evenmore likely when one works with those citizenswho are employed by government. In onecountry, a civil servant questioned why we weretalking about ``change'' at all. He found theterm `ìmprovement'' more acceptable. Inanother country it was only after three days ofworkshop that there was more or less consensusthat gender discrimination existed. On theother hand, the training and presentation must

avoid being too subtle out of concern overscaring o� o�cials. In a third workshop it wasonly on the third day that one participantrealized that ``redistribution'' was core to theinitiative.

As noted above, the three category Austra-lian framework has been used in other coun-tries as well. The speci®cation of gender-speci®cexpenditure as only one of three categoriesattempts to ensure that the exercise does notfocus only on gender-speci®c projects orprograms. The broader focus di�erentiates theexercise described in this article from that of thePhilippines. That country has, since 1995, had aGender and Development Budget Policy whichstates that all government agencies must allo-cate at least 5% of their budgets to programsand projects addressing women or genderconcerns. This, in our terms, is category oneexpenditure.

The strength of the Philippines approach isthat it includes incentives for allocations largerthan 5% through performance contracts andbudget reallocations. The weakness is that theapproach ignores what is happening in main-stream expenditure. This weakness has beenraised by local groups. Thus Diane Elsonquotes a review commissioned by the WomenÕsAction Network for Development which saysthat, from the point of NGOs, ``the properapproach is not to ask Ôhow many funds is therefor gender concerns?Õ Rather, Ôhow can the useof current resources be freed of gender bias, ifanyÕ'' (Elson, 1999, p. 5).

The restricted focus has also been evident inother countries, despite training in the three-category approach. Thus one country conduc-ted a fairly comprehensive analysis of severalsectoral budgets which established in the mindsof the government employees concerned thatthere was indeed gender discrimination. Theproposed solution, despite the training in thethree-category framework, was to propose aspecial project for women, and to solicit donorfunding for this project. The solution contra-dicted both the need for rethinking of main-stream expenditure, and the need to reallocatefrom the government budget itself, i.e., toredistribute. The analysis of donor funding ofthe South African government revealed that thebulk of assistance named by the donor inter-viewees as being gender-related were categoryone type expenditures.

In the original conception, analysis of thesecond category of expenditure was seen asfocusing on initiatives which promoted equal


opportunity. This was relevant in a countrysuch Australia, where several such initiativesexisted. It is also potentially important in SouthAfrica, where the constitution speci®callyprovides for what, in the United States, is calleda�rmative action, but which some prefer to callcorrective action. Thus clause 9(3) of the SouthAfrican Bill of Rights states: ``To promote theachievement of equality, legislative and othermeasures designed to protect or advancepersons, or categories or persons, disadvan-taged by unfair discrimination may be taken.''

In other countries it is often more di�cult tothink of examples of category two expenditure.Often the analysis focuses, instead, on thegender pro®le of the public service. Such anal-ysis, which in e�ect is a gender decompositionof personnel expenditures, is important in itselfgiven (a) the large percentage which personnelexpenditures (salaries and bene®ts) constituteof the budgets of most countries and, inparticular, of nondonor expenditures; and (b)that government employees often constitute aprivileged group because of more secureemployment in a situation of large informalsectors and high unemployment.

The importance extends beyond this,however. It is not only the absolute number ofwomen and men employed, but also the jobs inwhich they are employed. First, there is thequestion of levels. In South Africa, for exam-ple, there are more or less equal numbers ofwomen and men employed in national andprovincial government overall. When nationaland provincial are disaggregated, however, thepicture changes. National government, whichformulates overall policy, is seen to be male-dominated, while the provinces, which deliverservices such as education, health and welfare,are heavily female-dominated. Thus while 50%of public servants are women, the latter aredisadvantaged in terms of both decision-mak-ing power and payment.

Beyond these broad patterns, the analysiscan also point to concern about particular jobs.In most countries participants in these exercisesagree on the desirability of rape victims beingable to report to female police o�cers. InBarbados participants suggested that a greaterpresence of male teachers might help addressthe higher male school dropout rate currentlybeing experienced.

The three-category framework is a sectoralone which does not address macroeconomicpolicy more broadly. The inside governmentinitiatives rarely, if ever, address these macro-

economic policies. There is, however, discus-sion of the budget process as o�cials fromagencies other than the Ministry of Financeoften resent their own lack of power and thestrict restrictions which they perceive theMinistry of Finance (and donors) as imposingon them. Outside government initiatives usuallyinvolve discussion of the budget process, as thisexcludes outsiders even more than governmento�cials. Initiatives have rarely dealt withmacroeconomic policy in any depth. There are,however, references to the restrictions imposedby structural adjustment and similar policies,particularly on the ``social'' sectors.

7. WHOSE AGENDA?

The Australian womenÕs budget was bornafter the mid-1980s Labor Party victory inAustralia. The advent of the new governmentsaw a signi®cant number of feminist womenentering the bureaucracy. The womenÕs budgetwas one of the ways in which these ``femocrats''sought to ensure that the new governmentaddressed womenÕs needs.

The South African WomenÕs Budget Initia-tive was also born out of a change in govern-mentÐthis time from the rule of apartheidÕsNational Party to that of the post-apartheidAfrican National Congress (ANC). The ANCitself was committed to womenÕs empower-ment, as evidenced by its adherence to a one-third quota on its election lists. (South Africautilizes the list system, rather than a constitu-ency-based system, for national and provincialelections.) Both the interim and ®nal constitu-tions of the new regime had non-racism andnon-sexism among their most fundamentalprinciples. Prior to the elections women fromacross race, party, class and other divides cametogether in the WomenÕs National Coalitionand drew up a Charter for E�ective Equality.The WomenÕs Budget Initiative re¯ected thecommitment of some of the over 100 newwomen parliamentarians to ensure that thisaspirational document could become reality.

The Australian and South African initiativeswere clearly driven by internal politicaldynamics. In some other countries, even with-out the direct link with political change, it hasbeen local women who have taken the initia-tive. Yet in virtually all countries of the Southundertaking initiatives, with the exception ofAustralia, donors have provided resources andsupport. Multilateral institutions such as the


World Bank, United Nations (UN) agenciesand the Commonwealth Secretariat have comeout openly in favor of the initiatives. Bothgovernment and nongovernment bilateralorganizations have provided ®nancial andother support. In at least some countries,donors appear keener than those directlyinvolved that the initiatives should thrive.

All donors do not necessarily share the sameagendas. The World BankÕs motivation forsupporting gender analysis of budgets appearsto focus primarily on e�ciency. The Bankargues, correctly, that ignoring or impeding thepotential contribution of half the populationwill diminish the overall levels of wealth in thesociety. Some of the UN agencies, meanwhile,focus more on issues of equity and empower-ment. Some of the governmental and nongov-ernmental bilateral donors see the initiatives asmeeting their concerns about good governanceandÐparticularly where they involve parlia-ment or civil society playersÐpublic participa-tion and transparency.

From the side of recipient countries, it issometimes argued that the concern with genderhas been imposed on countries and thatgovernments are only assenting to itÐorpretending to assentÐin order to access otherfunds. A variant of this argument states thatgender equity is foreign to the local culture. AnIrish Aid document acknowledges the possi-bility that the `ìmposition of donor genderpolicy'' could be `à form of cultural imperial-ism.'' The document emphasizes that cultureschange, but states that ``decisions on where tofocus and how to proceed must be determinedby those who will live with the outcome''(Gaynor, 1995, p. 5).

Donors (and other interventionists, such asconsultants) can ask why one should considerimposition of gender equity values any di�erentfrom imposing values of transparency,accountability and democracy. All the lattercan as easily be claimed to be part of ``culture''as are gender issues. Gender, however, evokesmuch stronger feelings because it raises morepersonal issues for those involved. Further, anyintervention is questionable if there is littleapparent support from within the country.

The level of support generally depends onwhom the intervention chooses as a partner.Donors are often keen to engage with govern-ments, seeing this as where the power lies. Often,however, government employees are less likelyto be committed to, or even aware of, genderissues than civil society groupings. The level of

alienation can be extreme. In one workshopthere was an exercise in which participants wereasked to list and discuss the advantages of doinggender analysis of the budget. A middle-levelgovernment bureaucrat answered, with no senseof embarrassment and no apparent attempt athumor: ``The donors like it.''

As noted, donors often choose governmentinterventions because of governmentÕsperceived power. Most countries today willcontain at least a small group of gender activ-ists who would understand and support the sortof things that gender analysis of budgetsadvocate. Sometimes, however, these groupsare small. Often, despite energy and enthusi-asm, the system provides them with little powerto change things. Limited chance of e�ectobviously limits the resources which both thesegroups and donors are willing to devote to theexercises.

South Africa is fortunate in this regard. Inthe fourth year of research the WomenÕs BudgetInitiative focused, among other things, ondonor funding to government. Donorscontribute only 2% of the South Africangovernment budgetÐa much smaller percent-age than for most of her neighbors. Neverthe-less, this was seen as an important focusbecause of donor interest in, and advocacy of,gender issues in other countries as well as thelack of transparency by the South AfricanDepartment of Finance on issues of donorfunding.

One of the questions addressed to the 30 orso donors enquired as to whether theyperceived themselves, the government, or bothas promoting gender issues in the country morevigorously. Interestingly, at least as manyrespondents said that the South Africangovernment was at least as keen as the donorsin this respect as said the opposite. Represen-tatives of one of the more powerful donorsobserved that government was ``far ahead inthe game.''

In terms of the womenÕs budget exercise, itwas civil society and parliamentarians whoinitiated the exercise in South Africa. Further,while there is individual and institutionalsupport from within government, it is almostcertainly the ongoing questions and interestdisplayed by parliamentarians and civil societywhich ensure that the government continues toproduce gender-disaggregated data and analy-sis of its activities and expenditure. In Tanza-nia, similarly, it was an NGO which ®rstembarked on the analysis. It was only a year


later that the government felt constrained totake action lest itÐin the words of one of thecivil servantsÐget ``left behind.''

8. CONCLUSION

Gender analysis of budgets is a tool forchange. The analysis could help in addressingwhat have been termed both practical andstrategic gender needs. For example, an analy-sis which revealed the disproportionate burdenwhich women bear in relation to childcarecould, on the one hand, promote the provisionof childcare facilities to relieve this burdensomewhat. On the other hand, the policy andprograms could attempt to alter the genderdivision of labor so that the burden did not fallso disproportionately on women. Which routeis chosen depends on the level of analysis aswell as the ideology of those who conduct itand can take its ®ndings into consideration inplanning policies.

Thus in a workshop in one country, mostgovernment employees participating in aworkshopÐand especially the menÐseemedrather horri®ed that men might want to changenappies and that government could considertaking action to encourage this and othersharing of domestic tasks. Nevertheless, thesesame participants were quick to acknowledgethe fact that the population of the rural areaswas predominantly female, that poverty wasconcentrated in these areas, and that govern-ment projects should and could target women.They were also not averse to initiatives thatwould alleviate the domestic burden borne bywomen so long as this did not involve men inthe work.

As with any intervention, those initiating theactivity need to devise a strategy. They need toplan how to present the intervention to thosefrom whom they expect and need support. Thisis particularly so when, as is often the case withgender budget ventures, there is likely to besome resistance. It is even more crucial wheresome of those involved in the intervention arefrom outside the country.

In countries without a strong commitment togender equality, what are the attractions ofsuch an exercise? When the idea is ®rst intro-duced many react in a hesitant, if not hostile,way. The exercise is seen as implying additionalwork, whereas many government o�cials seethemselves as already overloaded. The exerciseis also usually seen as requiring additional

money at a time when most governments arebattling to reduce budget de®cits.

In at least some instances this initial oppo-sition has been allayed, or even turned around,when people realize that the exercise is notabout more work or money, but about betterwork and better allocation of budgets. InAustralia one of the drawbacks of the exercisewas the amount of resources committed to theexercise itself. In that country each state as wellas the federal government produced budgetreports dedicated to looking at expenditure inrelation to women. The focus of recent work-shops in other countries has been on how thetechniques can be incorporated in existing workrather than on producing separate publications.The emphasis is on encouraging o�cials torecognize the utility of ``disaggregating''expenditure in terms of its impact on womenand men, as well as in terms of other variables.As noted above, this emphasis also ties in wellwith the current interest in program perfor-mance budgeting. In monetary terms, wheno�cials start thinking of policy goals at thesame time as budgets, they recognize thatgender analysis can result in expenditures thatare both more e�cient in targeting the trulyneedy, and more equitable.

Sen notes that endeavors to ``sensitize''government actors through gender traininghave had limited success in that there is a``tendency to treat what goes on in such train-ings as a spare-time activity of little conse-quence to their ongoing work'' (Sen, 1997,p. 48). The budget analysis training has beensomewhat di�erent as it focuses on what theconcepts and ideas mean for daily work.Increasingly the focus of training has been onpractical and participatory tasks rather thantheoretical inputs.

Nevertheless, while evaluations of workshopssee most participants stating that they can andwill incorporate what they have learned in theirdaily work, the extent to which this occurs, andthe impact that this has on policy and alloca-tions, remains to be seen. In at least some casesthe evaluations themselves suggest di�culties.Participants point, for example, to the need toconvince the top o�cials who are their superi-ors. In some cases these responses could beevidence of buck-passing. In some cases itcould be evidence of o�cials not realizing theirown power, as the reason for focusing onmiddle-level o�cials has been a recognitionthat those at the top are only minimallyinvolved in the work which forms the basis of


budgets. In most cases, however, the hierar-chical nature of ministries means that withoutthe go-ahead from the top, the initiatives willnot go far.

The paragraphs above focus on insidegovernment exercises. One of the greateststrengths of having a parliamentary voice ininitiatives, besides the parliamentariansÕ legiti-mated power, lies in agitating for changesbefore budgets are drawn up so as to in¯uenceo�cials rather than making changes afterpresentation. This provides the potential fore�ecting change, rather than simply analyzingwhat has happened. The civil society voice addsstrength to the parliamentary one. Civil soci-etyÕs powers are more restricted, however, thanparliamentÕs, being con®ned to limited powersfor submissions and addresses to parliament. InSouth Africa one of the strengths of theparliament-NGO partnership is that the NGOshave been able to provide solid research withwhich parliamentarians can motivate theircomments and suggestions.

Gender budget initiatives also hold otherbene®ts for civil society and for good gover-nance more generally. One of the most impor-tant is the increased transparency andaccountability which ensues when governmentsengage seriously in these exercises. Transpar-ency and accountability are not simply of

theoretical value. In order to engage in e�ectiveagitation and oversight, both parliamentariansand civil society need decent information. Agood, ongoing gender budget exercise providesthe basis for greater involvement of people inin¯uencing policy and budget allocations andin monitoring their implementation, even ifopportunities for drafting of budgets remainminimal.

This issue of World Development focuses onmacroeconomics and international trade. Thegender budget initiatives have, to date, saidlittle at the global level about these issues.Sectoral analysis of the ministries dealing withtrade and economics provides some opportu-nity for this type of analysis and comment.Sectoral analysis of the Ministry of Financeitself, and the processes involved in budgetformulation, provide some opportunity forcomment on how macroeconomic policy isdrawn up and implemented. Exercises insidegovernment cannot be expected to provide acritique of a countryÕs macroeconomic policy.Exercises outside government provide the spaceto do so. Whether this space is taken updepends on a host of political and other factorsrelating to the situation in the country and thesituation and objectives of those involved in theinitiative.

NOTES

1. In South Africa only the ministers and their imme-

diate sta� are referred to as ministries.

REFERENCES

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Budlender, D. (1997). The second women's budget.Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in SouthAfrica.

Budlender, D. (1998). The third women's budget. CapeTown: Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

Budlender, D. (1999). The fourth women's budget. CapeTown: Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

Budlender, D., Sharp, R., & Allen, K. (1998). How to doa gender-sensitive budget analysis: contemporaryresearch and practice. London: CommonwealthSecretariat and Ausaid.

Cock, J., & Bernstein, A. (1998). Diversity and disad-vantage: feminist perspectives from the USA andSouth Africa. Politikon, 25 (2), 17±29.

Commonwealth Secretariat. (1999). Gender budget initia-tive. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.

Elson, D. (1999). A tool for implementing the platform foraction: gender-sensitive budget analysis. Paper pre-pared for the workshop on Gender, Macroeconomicsand Globalization hosted by the UNDP, FordFoundation, University of Utah and MacArthurFoundation, New York, 25±26 March.

Gaynor, C. (1995). Irish aid policy on gender on anoperational footing. Irish Aid, Dublin.

Hurt, K., & Budlender, D. (1998). Money matters:women and the government budget. Cape Town:Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

Sen, G. (1997). Mainstreaming gender into common-wealth government ministries and related agenciesresponsible for ®nance. Gender and Youth A�airsDivision, Commonwealth Secretariat, London.

Sharp, R., & Broomhill, R. (1998). Women andgovernment budgets. Australian Journal of SocialIssues, 25 (1), 1±14.


UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund forWomen) (1998). Engendering budgets: the SouthernAfrican experience. A UNIFEM Regional Work-shop, UNIFEM, Harare, November.

Valodia, I. (1996). Work. In: D. Budlender, The women'sbudget (pp. 53±96). Cape Town: Institute for Democ-racy in South Africa.

Valodia, I. (1998). Finance, state expenditure, SArevenue service and central statistical service. In: D.Budlender, The third women's budget (pp. 89±116).Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in SouthAfrica.


Documents

The Political Economy of Women's Budgets in the South