Gender Responsive Budgeting in South Africa and India ( BUHE S. NLEYA)

The utility Gender Responsive Budgeting has gained popularity in most countries in the world; including India and South Africa who have made significant strides in as far as upliftment of women is concerned in pursuit of gender equality, while fighting to eradicate women’s poverty. However loopholes in the planning and implementation of Gender Responsive Budgeting in the above mentioned countries, is a problem for concern which threatens the true  potential of having an equal  society where by women and men would be at par in the political, socio-economic spectrum of life with sanity and peace prevailing.

There are multiple definitions of the term Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB).  According to (United Nations Women) an entity for gender equality and empowerment of women, it is a government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and fulfillment of human rights. (Bartle, 2007) notes that GRB “is a government budget that explicit integrates into any or all parts of decision making process regarding resource allocation and revenue generation”. It entails highlighting and reflecting needed interventions to address gender gaps in local government policies, plans and budgets.

 More so, (Elson, 2002 pg 25) supports the view that GRB eradicates gender inequality and uplift women as he says “if women themselves have more control over resources, there will be gains for the society as a whole, but if gender inequality persists, there will be continuing losses for the whole society”. (Balmari, 2003 pg 5) articulates that it is important to enforce GRB as it eradicates socio-economic disparity between men and women as it recognizes the underlining inequalities and redresses them through allocation of public resources. Therefore it’s not all about creating separate budgets for women or solely increasing spending on women programs, rather it seeks to ensure that collection and allocation of public resources is carried out in ways that are effective and contribute towards advancement of gender equality. One is convinced that, GRB requires government officials to think about finances in a new way and look beyond the household to examine how addresses budgets the needs of female and male members.

GRB is mandated by numerous international commitments, including Fourth World Conference on Women, the Millennium Summit and the 2005 World Summit (Vega and Dahlstrom, 2008 pg 1). Its historical background stems from Australia as it started in the mid 1980’s and by 2002 there were over 60 countries around the world that had experience of GRB, including India and South Africa which are the main focus areas in this essay.

 In India, while much of the ground work of GRB have been done in the years presiding its introduction in the year 2004-5 such as implementation of the Seventh Plan between 1987 to 1992, it was arguable a report of an expert group created by the Ministry of Finance on the classification of government expenditure which became instrumental (Mishira and Sinha, 2012 pg 50). The expert group looked at ways to integrate GRB in the budgeting process of the government of India with plausible institutional mechanisms, which resulted in the Minister of Finance initiating a process of creating an institutional mechanism for mainstreaming gender by mandating the setting up of Gender Budgeting Cells (GBCs) in all ministries.

Furthermore the year 2005-6 was a landmark one for GRB in India through the introduction of Gender Budget Statement (GBS). The Minister of Finance started to have a role that reflects gender mainstreaming approach, mandated with overall responsibility for GRB, while the Ministry of Women and Children Development was tasked to serve as a nodal agency for GRB and provide support to all other agencies in understanding and complying with the approach such as Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology. This earmarked the theoretical beginning of the upliftment of women in India through the utility of GRB.

In South Africa, the idea of looking at the budgets from a gender perspective was raised during the negotiations that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994(Hurt and Budlender, 1998 pg 25). The Women Budget Initiative (WBI) was set up in mid-1995 by the Parliamentary Committee on Finance and assisted by two research Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). They carried out a research for 5 years, and they argue that WBI does not mean simple “more women”, but states that traditional economics and especially unpaid labour is one of the main reasons why policies and budgets are not gender sensitive.

Since the introduction of GRB in these respective countries positive notes have been recorded towards the upliftment of women. In India prior to introduction of GRB, there was no way of even estimating how much the government total expenditure was flowing to women. Therefore with the production of GBS, as part and parcel of Union budget document, an institutionalised effort is being made to answer this question, which continues to put the government on the spotlight to improve women conditions in the country (Mishira and Sinha, 2012 pg 51). Thus  Women’s Rights Activist’s and Civil Society Organisation’s, such  as Saheli Women’s Resource Centre are now in a better position and   place to call for the better funding provision of women’s rights on a much stronger ground unlike before.

Furthermore GRB has uplifted women in India as initiatives by stakeholders outside the government such as National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) continues to carry out gender analysis of the Union’s budget, for instance in 2006-07 NIPFP after analysing the India’s budget passed recommendations on how women can to be empowered  which had  a significant role in improving of the budget taking into cognisance gender equality(Gender Budget Experiences in India and Around the Globe). Furthermore with the availability of GRB academic and research institutions are now able to assist the government in improving women’s empowerment through analysing programs like Impact of Policies on Small Urban Manufactures in Mumbai and Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra.

South Africa has also made inroads in the upliftment of women through GRB, for example after the analyses of 26 budgets votes of 26 national government and 5 municipalities for local sphere between 1996 and 1999, there was introduction of a gender focus to the work of the Joint Standing Committee of Finance in Parliament which motivated future development of a gender disaggregated statistical base, target indicators and gender sensitive programs review mechanisms (UN, 1998). Gender Disaggregated Data base provides the basis of analysis to assess the different situations of women and men, whether the conditions are changing or note  for instance, the government is aware that Limpopo Province is one of the poorest provinces in the country in terms of education with poverty rife among women. The government through the Ministry of Education has been coming up with measures to improve education standards through provision of extra financial bases being channeled to Province with the motive of achieving gender equality, for instance the government distributed text books for grade 1, 2 and 3 in 2012 so that each learner have one book, per subject, per grade (Basic Education Department Updates, 2012).

Furthermore, the inroads made by WBI enhanced the awareness of  policy making and implementation to be gender sensitive, as a result government expenditure programs  and in particular Expanded Public Works Program  reflect a gendered impact of work opportunities created across the environmental, social, and infrastructural sectors of the government(Kithatu-Kiwekete, 2011).  The government of South Africa has also incorporated gender responsive measures related to domestic violence in their budget as a way to empower women who are mostly the victims, for example coming up with necessary rehabilitation support of the victims and enforcing stern laws for the perpetrators. It is posited that spending money to prevent violence against women, will reduce costs to other parts of the budget such as spending much in health sector. In addition (Xingwana, 2012)  notes that an array of measures introduced since 1994 to promote women empowerment and uphold gender equality  such as GRB, have drastically improved the positions of women and conditions of women in the country, as women now occupy influential positions in the government and play an important role in decision making. Therefore this shows one that, GRB has somehow improved or uplifted women in South Africa.

In contrary GRB in both India and South Africa, got many loopholes that has and continue to act as stumbling block for effective upliftment of women thereby slowing true reflection of gender equality.  In India despite several attempts at redefining and restructuring to ensure accurate GRB, it remains fraught with huge methodological errors (Banerjee, 2004). She argues that many programs targeted specifically for women in India already serve to reinforce traditional roles and spending on them should not be counted as equality promoting expenditure. Therefore, for the country to achieve equality between men and women there is need to push for policies that promote them in roles that will change gender existing relations.

More so, (Mishira and Sinha, 2012 pg 53) notes that the current form of GRB in India has limitations towards the upliftment of women as the current allocation exercise is not in a position to relate to policy making as it neither serves as a tool that informs policy making, nor does it enable policy makers to access the additional steps needed to make policies that promote gender equality through support of GRB. It will be more useful if the Finance Ministry committee of GRB began with identifying the pressing gender gaps in a particular scheme, followed by what steps the Ministry will take in a particular year to address the gap and then identify the budgeting resources needed to address pressing gender gaps and ensure requisite funds are made available and spent well.

In addition, diverse cultures and traditions in India has resulted in the GRB failing to uplift women, for instance 13% of the population is Muslim who are guided by Shariah law that advocates for patriarchy in  the society, making it one of the largest Islamist nations in the world (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2011). Thus, Islamists men in the government do not have the zeal to work towards achieving gender equality through supporting GRB as they believe; it threatens their positions in the society. One can stress that a lot still needs to be done in India in terms of reversing religious ideologies that men are superior to women so as to harness the potential GRB offers towards upliftment of women.

Also South Africa is still bedeviled by gender inequality because of some inefficiency within GRB. (Xingwana, 2012) articulates that, women still bore disproportionate budget of triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, as they continue to be marginalized and discriminated against in terms of economic opportunities, the labour market as well as access to land credit.  This is due to gendered roles existing in the South African society as there is little financial support towards eliminating household burden of women as well as the aiding productivity of women in the informal sector and agricultural sectors where there are the main participants (Chobokoane and Budlender, 2002). Therefore one can point that, purposive gender planning still lacks because of gender gaps between men and women in socio-economic sectors in South Africa which affect the quality and the quantity of budget spending as very little has been done to financially assist women peasants and informal traders.

Furthermore municipalities under the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) who have a mandate of spearheading development of local communities, including ensuring the full participation of women in local government have failed to practically empower women through GRB, for example in Maletswai Municipality in Eastern Cape, GRB takes place by default as the municipality has no gender mainstreaming policy and officials have little knowledge of gender mainstreaming as a technical process(Accessing Gender Responsive Budgeting in Local Government). This is just a glimpse of what is transpiring in most municipalities which has stalled the empowerment of women in South Africa.

In a nutshell, a lot of ground work still needs to be done in both India and South Africa for Gender Responsive Budgeting to uplift women, especially the patriarchal ideology that still exists in their societies that man are superior to women. This would help, when development architects especially respective governments goes back to the drawing board to review its budget to support programs which can uplift women to be at par with men on a long run. However credit is still given to India and South Africa for the successes they have accomplished so far, in terms of upliftment of women through GRB.

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