GENDER BUDGETING IN BELGIUM: FINDINGS FROM A PILOT PROJECT

ABSTRACT

The article highlights activities and findings of the Belgian initiative regarding gender budgeting, which are put against the background of theory and practice developed so far elsewhere. Attention is drawn upon the opportunities of gender budgeting to push further forward the policy goals of gender equality, thereby overcoming a number of problems commonly associated with the currently widely propagated strategy of gender mainstreaming. The article provides first-hand information on the origin of the Belgian initiative, its political location, the activities performed and the methodology used. Analysis of findings addresses a number of key dimensions in gender budgeting, including (i) the overarching importance of the political location, (ii) the internal management and monitoring function of gender budgeting and the importance of prevailing budgetary systems, and (iii) the external accountability function of gender budgeting and the need to link up with outside-government initiatives.

Keywords:

• gender budgeting
• Belgium
• gender mainstreaming
• gender budget analysis
• accountability
• public management

Notes

¹In order to disentangle more clearly between initiatives that are restricted to analysis and those that have reached the stage of systematic integration into budgeting, one may also use separate wording. The former are then labelled ‘gender budget analysis’, the latter ‘gender budgets’, ‘gender-sensitive budgets’ or ‘gender-responsive budgets’, while ‘gender budget initiatives’ is used as the overall umbrella concept (Hofbauer 2003). Strictly speaking one could also use separate wording for initiatives that take place at different moments in the budget cycle: i.e., gender budgeting (planning stage); gender accounting (implementation and monitoring phase); gender auditing (audit and evaluation stage).

²See articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty of Amsterdam and the 1996 Commission communication ‘Integration of equal opportunities for men and women in all community policies and actions’.

³See Sharp and Broomhill (2002) and Sawer (2002) for a description and analysis of the Australian gender budget initiatives.

⁴Budlender (2002b: 85) refers in this respect to the fundamental criticism stating that the gender responsive budgeting approach, by not asking questions about the theoretical assumptions underlying the budgetary framework, is rather reformist than transformative.

⁵Figures apply to the former European Union of 15 member states.

⁶The website of the Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development (OECD) (see http://www.oecd.org/department) offers accessible information on public sector and budgeting reforms in OECD countries.

⁷In a system of line-item or incremental budgeting every year an amount of funding is added to the budget of the previous year. The focus is exclusively on the input level of the budget and contrary to a system of performance-based budgeting no linkage is established between the input level and the subsequent levels of ‘activities’, ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’. See Sharp (2003) for a more detailed overview of different budgetary systems.

⁸The French and the Swedish initiatives are both steered by their respective governments and reported on in an official annex to the budget (OECD 2001). The outside-government initiative in the UK is driven by the Women's Budget Group, which is mainly composed of academics and members of women's and trade union's organisations and predominantly focuses on the revenue side of the government budget (see among others Himmelweit 2002; St Hill 2002).

⁹Instruments as gender-aware policy appraisal and gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessment are for instance primarily used for initiatives that are located at the ex-ante phase while gender-disaggregated benefit incidence analysis predominantly applies to ex-nunc and ex-post phases as it necessitates quantitative data about actual use of governmental services. Gender-disaggregated revenue incidence analysis is obviously only applicable to the revenue side of the budget.

¹⁰For a compilation of the contributions to the conference, see UNIFEM (2002).

¹¹A cabinet is a group of advisors working closely together with a minister.

¹²See Federaal Ministerie van Tewerkstelling en Arbeid (2002) and Michielsens (2001) for a more detailed overview of the gender mainstreaming project.

¹³One noteworthy exception regards the study documenting the gender-disaggregated impact on employment of official measures taken to diminish employers’ social contributions, published by the Federal Ministry of Employment in 2000.

¹⁴For a more detailed overview of all findings, see Cecchini et al. (2002, 2003a,b).

¹⁵Analysis at the level of the Ministry of Finance were conducted by Mr. Valenduc (Ministry of Finance) and the expert group that was installed at the Ministry; data regarding the statute of ‘helping spouses’ were provided by Ms. Warrier (National Agency for Social Security).

¹⁶Elson and Cagatay (2000) consider ‘the male breadwinner bias’ in macroeconomic policy one of the causes for women's entitlement failure. It refers to ‘the construction of ownership of rights to make claims on the state for social benefits (access to services, cash transfers) around a norm of full-time, life-long working-age participation in the market-based force’ (Elson and Catagay 2000: 1355).

¹⁷See Cecchini et al. (2003c) for the concise leaflet and Cecchini et al. (2003b) for the synthesis report. Intermediate reports include Cecchini et al. (2002, 2003a).

¹⁸While the obvious advantage of placement within the Ministry of Finance/Budget is their overarching importance in various stages of the budget cycle, several authors, including among others Sen (2000) have indicated their poor track record in commitment and knowledge about gender mainstreaming.

¹⁹The application of performance-based budgeting types does however not automatically lead to gender-sensitive budgeting. For an overview of conditions and challenges, see Sharp (2003) and Sharp and Connelly (2003).

²⁰Both programme-based and zero-based budgeting are alternatives to the line-item budgeting system and have been elaborated to cope with the ‘incrementalism’ and the neglect of efficiency and effectiveness in government spending. In a system of programme-based budgeting (and planning), goals and objectives are first established; alternative ways to achieve the objectives are identified and selection of activities is based upon the calculation of cost-benefit ratios. With zero-based budgeting, the starting point is not the budget of the previous year (as is the case in line-item incremental budgeting), but ‘zero’ and all activities need to be justified on their effectiveness and efficiency. See Sharp (2003) for a more detailed overview of different budgetary systems.

²¹For an easy-to-read overview, see Federale Overheidsdienst Personeel en Organisatie (2002), ‘Copernicus: midden in de toekomst. De hervorming van de Belgische Federale Overheid’. In the meantime (since mid-2003), there has been a government change and a new minister in charge which have resulted in a revision (including a weakening and a slackening) of the reform initiated by the previous government. At this moment, it is too early to assess the ‘adjusted’ reform process and its results.

²²A Group of Specialists on Gender Budgeting have been working on the Guidelines on Gender Budgeting for the Council of Europe member states. The report is publicly available at http://www.coe.int/equality/

²³See also Pearson (1995: 1998) who reports on a gender and macroeconomics training program for a combined audience of experts from Caribbean Economic Planning Ministries and Women's Ministries. She considers the workshop as ‘a significant first step in breaking down some of the professional barriers to an integration and to rethinking the institutional as well as analytical processes which have hitherto ensured the separation of gender analysis and macroeconomics’.Commission of the European Communities, 1996