Wellbeing gender budgeting to localize the UN SDGs: examples from Turkey

IMPACT

Achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires local public policy implementation along with national commitments. By mapping policies for gender equality with capabilities and resource allocation in three Turkish cities, this article presents an analytical framework to track the progress of a country’s SDG commitments in terms of local policy and budget transformation. This wellbeing gender budgeting matrix framework highlights the links between municipal policies, the local budget and women’s quality of life. It can be used to show whether national policy rhetoric is actually translating into changes in women’s safety and mobility.

ABSTRACT

The wellbeing approach to gender budgeting enables accounting for quality of life in terms of accessibility. Social inclusion of vulnerable groups, especially women, is the main concern of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and its achievement is conditional upon related local government policy because local governments are the closest to citizens. Focusing on localization of the SDG 5 and SDG 11 and on two capabilities (mobility and safety), this article proposes a framework of wellbeing gender budgeting and illustrates it with matrices for 2016–2019 for three cities at different stages of development in Turkey. The article discusses the need for policy consistency and data availability, and the funding requirements necessary for achieving SDGs in developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Capabilities
• gender budgeting
• sustainable development goals (SDGs)
• Turkey
• wellbeing

Acknowledgements

This work is dedicated to the memory of late Fahrettin Yagci, supervisor and mentor, whose lifelong concern for inequality and guidance has shaped my career. I am indebted to Tindara Addabbo of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and to Tackmeon Yi of the Korean Women’s Development Institute for sharing their expertise on gender budgeting. I extend my sincere thanks to Giovanna Galizzi and Public Money & Management’s reviewers for their insightful contributions. I acknowledge the support of the Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit of Istanbul University: BEK-2017-25563 and BYP-2018-31019.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.