Gender oriented budgets as a prerequisite for social reforms.

Intervention in Panel Discussion, EU-conference on Gender Budgeting, June 4 -5 in Frankfurt.

Madame Chair,

Firstly, thank you to my fellow panellists for summing up the working groups so eloquently and relevant!

On the  background of the discussions yesterday, both in plenum and the working groups, it seems to be a need to clarify some concepts: Do we talk about  the "toolbox of Gender Mainstreaming"  in which Gender Budgeting is one tool, or do we talk about "gender budgeting/gender oriented budgets" specifically ? There is a difference.

As for myself, having responsibility for budgets to family provisions, parental leave, gender equality and the National Machinery who handles the laws and promotes activities (the Anti-discrimination and Equality Ombudsman), R&D and nine specific laws to amend and develop ; app. 30 billions Norwegian kroner (app. 4 billion Euros)to allocate through 2 large National Authorities (directorates) and 18 County Governors, my staff and I do budgeting and accounting every day, every week, every year – in line with the national rules and regulations for budgeting and accounting – so no one should harbour the notion that we (or I) are here to discuss budgets not knowing " the game". In addition, my Ministry is one to coordinate and push the other line ministries (a challenging job!) to do gender sensitive budgeting and gender mainstreaming.
 
It seems, from our experiences, that it is wise to have substantial budgets to do - along with the task to push yourself and others to do gender analyses of them! (I will come back to some lessons learned on GB later on).

Obviously gender budgeting is conducive to modern, cost-effective governing, management by objectives, result-based management: To include gender-disaggregated data and analyses in planning and budget procedures where it is clearly right to do so! No question about that. No one will object; it gives more accuracy and better targeting; makes accounting and auditing easier as to objectives and factual "value for money”! It may give better transparency to stakeholders.

Gender oriented budgets/gender sensitive budgeting is not difficult to do; no "mystery" that needs wrapping in alienating rhetorical phrases. It is in fact good, old budget-craftsmanship! Of course, as my colleague from the Netherlands said yesterday, one ought to know the "budget dialect" from within. One needs to understand fully and deeply, how public budgets are the main political tools (in addition to legal actions and political communication) to produce social change, facilitate global competition and environment. No Ministry of Finance that I know of, will counter-argue this. However, listening to the discussions from yesterday on "how to convince ministries of finance to see the added value of GB", there must be a miss-conception somewhere:
If we are talking about Governmental /Cabinet Work, everyone knows that only Political Decisions from Cabinet (or sometimes "instructions from Parliament") can instruct / convince and legally bind the Ministry of Finance, or any Ministry, for that matter!

It is therefore of paramount importance to have your Cabinet of Ministers – with one voice – to ask for a gender-oriented budget practise (as we do in Norway):

a) through the Annual Main Central Budget-Instruction-Document for next years budget proposals (submitted by the Min. of Finance)

b) in the Central Directive for Ministerial Work (Utredningsinstruksen); being legal work, White/Green Papers to Parliament, reform-planning/designing, new economic schemes and so forth ;the Norwegian Central Directive has for appr.20 years included the request for gender analyses/costs

c) and it helps to have a Gender Equality Law with an obligatory duty for all enterprises to work for gender equality and report annually, and for ministries in addition to work for gender equality within all sectors of their responsibility, and report. (To comply with this, the Ministries may use the whole GM."tool-box" and in the budgets they shall do gender sensitive analyses, conf. a) above)

Now, referring to yesterday’s discussions, there is not only the effectiveness/accuracy argument to be used for gender oriented budgeting. That would be purely technical.
The issue deals with some deeper, political goals and commitments: I reiterate myself from yesterday, upon my Governments visions: "To obtain a gender equal society, we have to redistribute work, care and power between the genders". As an Austrian colleague expressed yesterday: "We must not loose the main aim out of sight when discussing gender budgeting; the aim of gender equality in our societies". I agree completely; this is not solely a technical matter, it is much more profound and value-based than that.

So, if your governments do not go for real and substantial gender equality as a political goal, you cannot expect any Ministry of Finance anywhere, to do gender budgeting! (Then gender budgeting may be a nice and handy voluntarily task; useful for both line ministries, National Authorities, and of course NGOs. And that is fine.)

If you use gender budgeting or gender oriented budgets /gender sensitive analyses within budgets, to detect political issues that ought to be dealt with immediately (as we spoke of yesterday), you will of course meet resistance! When you set out to redistribute power or work (paid and unpaid) between the genders, do not be surprised of resistance. Who did ever, in the history of mankind, give away power and privileges voluntarily?

For further development of good practises for gender sensitive budgets, I would recommend that

a) EU (and the EEA countries) should invite the European Social Partners to a dialogue on these matters, since the gender issues deal with policies for a citizen-friendly Europe (and since it has been said here that EU Financial Policy is "gender blind")

b) Use for all of what it is worth, the ILO conventions and recommendations on work and family balance, equal pay etc. Join forces with ILO

c) Rename the notion of "gender budgeting" to "gender sensitive budgets" or "gender oriented budgets", as to avoid the alienation of budget-circles to certain notions, and make it clearer what the core issue is.

Thank you!

 

I must admit that it took the Norwegian Govt. 4 -5 years to have the Ministry of Finance on board the Gender Budget-boat. The proof of it being worth while totally rested on us (coordinating Ministry for GE and family issues) and the line ministries. Some of the best arguments we had, was certain evaluations showing that use of public money or a given large reform did not meet the targets or produced the expected effects (using the methods we learned from Diane Elson; measuring use of resources within a limited field).

But we did some mistakes in somewhat alienating people, using “esoteric language” and giving the impression of these exercises to be cumbersome and time-consuming. We have learned from these mistakes.

Yesterday I mentioned that when doing GB, it is of the utmost importance to be prepared for and be aware of, that sometimes dry and “innocent” statistics or an evaluation will reveal conditions or challenges that any decent state cannot close its eyes to; it simply has to be solved!

One of the best ways to be prepared, is to have build a competence pool within the Central Bureau of Statistics, line ministries may finance posts for specific and running statistical tasks, and the Bureau can within short notice be able to break down numbers in very concrete fields, or take up analyses to help tailor-make the planning of a wanted political reform. The same crew can also be engaged when designing post-reform evaluations and doing accounts.

In my country we have used such statistical crew for some years now, to produce a GB statistical supplement to the Annual Budget Bill on macro level; men/women’s income (salary, pensions, and other assets), mothers and fathers working time and employment, and for next year: The factual consume of health services for men and women. (Men are presumed to be under-consuming…..)
For many years, limited sectorial fields from all the line ministries’ responsibilities have been gender assessed and reported on, in each Annual Budget Bill. The success has varied. The need to develop a manual for guidance was acknowledged; so we did (in my ministry, and this will be translated into English soon).

This year we are concluding an assessment done by an independent institution, of all Norwegian Ministeries, on the process of GB/GM and the results of it. I already know that GB practises are not complete successes everywhere, as yet…..We also did a specific targeted evaluation of my own ministry; believing that at least we – scored better in exercising GB. We learned that top managers must embrace the usefulness of the gender analyzing work, and are now setting up training courses.

I will mention one area we have worked on, for a long, long time in Norway, ever since we ratified the ILO convention on equal pay for work of equal value (1951).We have included the prohibition of gender-based, unequal pay in the GE Law and launched many measures. Annual statistics. Research. ICT-based measurement tools are developed.
We have included the issue of unequal pay in the social dialogue and the tripartite cooperation, and for years and years the social partners have included this focus in their annual wage negotiations on both macro and micro levels. Still it seems that reality is stubborn; we have a 15 % pay-gap (per hour, for work of equal value). Why does this prevail?
More and better GE analyses were needed: The labour market and its imperfection – not being able to produce full time employment for women, even if more labour is badly needed;  not being able to recruit women to industry and technology or men to care work and kindergartens; obviously the under-employment of women (forced or voluntarily) working with small fractions of a post (esp. in health care institutions) reproduces the image of the care -sector as a female, low-paid, part-time-sector, not suitable for men. Results are lower pensions for women at the end of the day and loss of careers prospects.
However, we did not quite understand the connections between the pay-gap and the un-equality in parental responsibilities before we had an assessment of how the women wages lag behind the men for each child they have. The opposite for men. This study was presented in March this year, and it looks like the correlations between Parental Leave Schemes and unequal pay is proved. The Icelanders, who have the 3 plus 3 plus 3 system, “forcing” the father to take 3 months at home, can show the same correlation; the wage gap is reduced when mothers come back to work earlier than in Norway, where the fathers tend to take only their 6 weeks quota; even if spouses may share half and half of the 54 weeks – in Norway.
Our Cabinet-appointed Equal Pay Commission, which is to deliver recommendations March next year, is now studying these recent gender analyses of parental leave and wages.
I could have mentioned many relevant examples, but time does not allow it.

Let me wrap up by saying that to integrate gender oriented analyses in the ordinary budget process or assessments (on any level of govt), not as a separate process, is more scientific and adequate than not doing so. It is as simple and practical as that. Planning reforms should be based on as accurate data as possible, and a genuine understanding of prevailing gender differences in our societies.