Introducing Gender Perspectives in the Budgetary Process at the Central Government Level

ABSTRACT

Governments across the world have implemented gender budgeting, but research on the topic is scarce. This article looks at how the introduction of gender perspectives in budget documents has informed the allocation of public resources at the central government level in Austria. The study combines a qualitative and quantitative document analysis of plenary speeches by members of parliament during budget approval. The results first show that gender budgeting related information was frequently mentioned in budget debates and thus informed resource allocation. Second, the analysis provides insights into which speakers are ‘promoters’ of gender budgeting in the legislative arena.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender budgeting
• performance-informed budgeting
• resource allocation
• central government level

Notes

1. See the summary of the main concepts and selected initiatives regarding gender budgets in the Americas by Feminamericas: https://www.feminamericas.net/EN/themes/ThemResumeBudgeta.5.pdf.

2. See for instance, the news article by Bui & Chira in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/24/upshot/how-trumps-budget-affects-women.html.

3. Approaches to gender budgeting at the state and local government level are diverse and not streamlined. However, there are several sub-national entities that reform their budgeting and accounting systems according to the federal case, thus also adopting the same approach to gender budgeting.

4. However, since the Austrian federal budgeting and accounting reform did not encompass the consolidation of (partly) outsourced entities and no whole-of-government statement is provided, the respective revenues and expenditures are only those of the ‚core‘ central government entities.

5. See https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/.