Barriers to Participation: Exploring Gender in Peru’s Participatory Budget Process

Abstract

As citizens increasingly work to improve transparency and governance, participatory budgeting (PB) has emerged in thousands of cities. Advocates argue that PB can serve to educate citizens, increase transparency, and even improve living standards in the cities and towns that implement this form of public finance. However, we still know very little about how inclusive these processes are. This article asks: first, are participatory budgeting processes engaging women and men equally? Second, if gender exclusion is taking place, why? Finally, what can the development community do to begin to eradicate exclusion? Through the case study of participatory budgeting in Peru, the article documents that participatory budgeting in this country is not inclusive. Economic barriers, combined with the fact that women are expected to take on most domestic duties, make it very hard for women to actually attend meetings, especially in rural areas where poverty and patriarchy are more pronounced. Additionally, the weakness of women’s organizations prevents many organizations from registering to attend these processes. The article concludes with recommendations for advocates who wish to rectify these challenges through concrete interventions.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Franklin and Marshall College and The American Association of University Women for providing support for this piece article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as Jennifer Kibbe, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, Timothy McCarty and Laura Shelton for helpful comments on previous versions. Finally, thank you to the Peruvian men and women who shared their valuable insights with me in 2010.

Notes

1. See http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/ for more on participatory budgeting and its spread around the world.

2. Exceptions exist. Some participatory budgeting processes, such as in Porto Alegre, Brazil (discussed below), have set up quotas to ensure that certain populations are participating. Others, such as the process that takes place in Boston in the United States, are exclusively targeting youth. However, the majority of the PB processes in Peru and in other countries are not designed in ways to enhance the participation of historically marginalised communities.

3. The literature on participatory governance more broadly is too extensive to summarise here. For more comprehensive reviews of that literature, see Goldfrank (2011); Van Cott (2008); Wampler (2007).

4. For just a sample of this work, see Abers (2000); Avritzer (2002); Baiocchi (2005); Baiocchi, Heller, & Silva (2011); Cornwall & Coehlo (2007); Funder (2010); Fung & Wright (2003); Goldfrank (2011); Heller (2001); McNulty (2011); Nylen (2003); Shah (2007); Wampler (2008, 2007, 2009).

5. For more information on this experience, see Abers (2000); Avritzer (2002, 2009); Baiocchi (2005); World Bank (2008); and Wampler (2008, 2007, 2009).

6. Other aspects that merit attention are the nature of the debate and dialogue in meetings (or the quality of participation), the groups or agents that bring proposals forward and the gendered impact of development projects.

7. UNIFEM defines gender-sensitive budgeting as ‘the analysis of the impact of actual government expenditure and revenue on women and girls as compared to men and boys’. For more information, see http://www.gender-budgets.org/.

8. See http://presupuestoparticipativo.montevideo.gub.uy/publicaciones/libro-guia-para-la-elaboracion-de-proyectos-con-perspectiva-de-genero

9. For more on this, see Barrig (1996, 1998); Ewig (2010); Moser (2004); Rousseau (2006); Vargas (1992, 1996).

10. See Defensoría del Pueblo (2003); McNulty (2011) and Zas Friz Burga (2004) for detailed discussions of the original legal framework.

11. The remainder of the subnational budget is made up of fixed (or operational) costs, which are not debated by participants.

12. See Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana (2009) and Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas (2010) for an overview of the process.

13. See Shack (2006) for a description of the entire national budget process in Peru.

14. Because Peru has a long history of corporatist structures in local politics, the PB design mandates that representatives from civil society organisations (CSOs) participate in the Peruvian institutions (see McNulty [2011] for more).

15. While regulations vary, to become legal most CSOs must demonstrate that it has a governing board, a constitution, a list of members and some sort of legal representative. There is usually a fee associated with becoming legal as well. For more on these regulations, see Ramírez Huaroto (2009).

16. See Chapter IV of Law 28411 (Ley General del Sistema Nacional de Presupuesto).

17. See https://mef.gob.pe/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 2122&Itemid = 101162&lang = es.

18. See http://presupuesto-participativo.mef.gob.pe/app_pp/db_distedit.php. The government reports data based on the year that the budget is debated, not spent. In other words, the 2008 data presented in Table 1 pertain to the PB process that unfolded around the country in 2007.

19. In this online source, trustworthy data over time and the entire country are only available for the regional level. There are too many municipal level processes (compared to 25 regions, there are 1,838 districts and 195 provinces) to track effectively; reporting at the municipal level has not been consistent over time.

20. One region, Callao, is an area bordering Lima and given special status. Because it is not a typical region, I do not include it in this analysis.

21. These data are available on LAPOP’s website at http://lapop.ccp.ucr.ac.cr/Lapop_English.html. Data for questions cp7 and cp8 are reported.

22. It is not possible to delve into this theoretical discussion due to space limitations. For more on the importance of these variables and their relation to gender equality in other political processes, see, for example, Zimmerman (1994) and Ingelhart and Norris (2003).

23. See Hochschild and Machung (1990) for one of the first works to theorise this term.

24. See UN data at http://data.un.org/.

25. There is an extensive literature on women’s organisations in Peru. For just some of this work see Vargas (1996, 1992) and Barrig (1998). For more on comedores populares specifically see Barrig (1996) and Moser (2004). For more on the health sector, see Ewig (2010). It is important to note, however, that even given this literature, there are no data regarding the exact number of organisations in any region or city around the country.

26. For a more detailed discussion of the paperwork and cost of registration, see Ramírez Huaroto (2009).

27. See http://www.munlima.gob.pe/noticias/ciudad/itemlist/tag/Presupuesto%20Participativo%202015. This may change because Mayor Susana Villarán pushed these efforts forward and she was voted out of office in October 2014.