Gender budgeting in the crossroad of gender policy and public financial management: The Finnish case

IMPACT

Finland has been using gender budgets (GB) for over 10 years; however, very little is known internationally about the Finnish GB experience. Finland’s experience provides several lessons for GB practitioners in other countries. It highlights the importance of clear national gender equality goals for effective GB implementation, as well as the need to pay attention to mid-term fiscal frameworks. It also shows how the lack of feminist economic expertise and a clear conceptual framework can reduce GB to technical processes and calculations, and the importance of outside-government actors drawing attention to the gendered impacts of economic policies.

ABSTRACT

The paper analyses the implementation of gender budgeting (GB) in Finland. It contributes to GB literature through shedding light on the dynamics of politicization and depoliticization in GB implementation, as well as the complex position of GB between gender equality policy and public financial management. The paper provides new insights on what the shift towards mid-term budgetary frameworks means for GB, which to date have been missing from the GB literature. It also addresses the relationship of gender mainstreaming and GB, as well as the role of civil society in re-politicizing GB through drawing attention to the impacts of economic policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Finland
• gender budgeting
• gender equality policy
• gender mainstreaming
• implementation
• public governance
• public financial management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted in the framework of the project 'Gender equality in the government budget' funded by the Finnish government's analysis, assessment and research activities and supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant number 771676).