Gender Budgeting: A Pathway towards Gender Equality Realization

Economic Impact of Gender Budgeting

Besides the societal benefits that we can get from gender budgeting initiative, we also can't forget the economic benefit this initiative can generate. Some of the good impacts that are being generated from this tool in economic aspect are an increase in GDP and higher level of employment and productivity. To note these benefits, let's take an example of the implementation of gender budgeting in European Union scope to prove whether it is economically beneficial. 

According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, compared to the growth effect made by education and labor-related policies, policies that uphold gender equality will increase nation's GDP per capita by 9.6% in 2050. 

In addition to this good news, improvements made by gender equality will also boost employment by creating an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050 which can affect directly the employment rate to reach 80 percentage points.

On the international trade area, improved gender equality will bolster EU's economic competitiveness by increasing an estimated 0.7% of export and decreasing import by 1.2% that will actually lead to a more balanced international trade condition in EU.

From the same studies, overall gender equality-based policies will be much more likely to create better development environment towards the whole economy rather than any other policies, at least in EU states, because statistically,  countries in EU that have comparatively more room to improve gender equality will gain an increase of 12% of GDP on average by 2050. Two of those best-performing countries are said to be Belgium and Italy. 

Are We There Yet?

It has been proven by the aforementioned examples that in the future, gender budgeting will give positive impacts for social and economic aspects because it can pretty much realize a more inclusive development. In addition, we also have to measure whether the implementation of this tool can actually reduce gender inequality effectively since we know that in some countries other than the EU, especially the developing ones, the focus on gender equality is comparatively lower. 

In this case, to see the degree of success in gender budgeting, we need to see it from the impact that can be generated from gender budgeting in achieving equality, growth, inclusive development, and human rights, rather than only because of the implementation that can mere show whether governments have followed the steps of gender budgeting or not ((e.g. Nakray 2009; Mushi and Edward 2010). 

Considering the matter above, gender budgeting will be most effective when it involves changes to both policy-making process -- including budget allocations  and administrative systems -- monitoring mechanisms (Stotsky 2016a). 

In reality, it's still considered as a struggle for countries to find the one effective method of incorporating gender responsive budgeting to their circular budgeting process because most of them still don't have sufficient mechanism in terms of monitoring the outcome of this initiative. Let's take an example from the Government of India where they actually have allocated their national budget towards women's empowerment programs, such as entrepreneurship loan and health program.