Hi everyone. Today we're diving into a really important topic, which is gender-responsive budgeting, or GRB. This marks the launch of our new report, Gender-Responsive Budgeting: Unlocking the Potential, which includes views from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Joe, how do we define GRB?
GRB is essentially about looking at budgetary allocations and making sure that policy decisions lead to more equal outcomes for women and men, and that any inequality is not further exacerbated. If we think about it in the current context, there's some really strong alignment with, for example, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — the UN SDGs — particularly Goal 5, which is about gender equality and focuses on women and girls. So what we see is lots of different parts of the world starting to take this whole piece far more seriously, because they can see that it's a really important tool to support them in meeting some of the UN SDG goals they've committed to.
Yes, and the UN SDGs actually look out to 2030, and it's already 2025, so that really creates a sense of urgency. The recent UN Gender Equality Snapshot for 2024 from UN Women showed that it could take potentially 137 years to eradicate extreme poverty for women — a really dire statistic. So we really want to create environments where everybody can thrive, and I think what GRB does is remove those barriers to equal opportunity.
Yes, it does. It would also be great to think about the economic benefits of GRB — what are some of the implications when we think about the economics of it?
Yes, so this is actually something we talked about on International Women's Day last year at ACCA. The recent study from the European Institute on Gender Equality showed that improvements in gender equality could increase GDP by 1.5 to 2%, which is really quite exciting — and out to 2050, potentially 6 to 10%. This could create the same number of jobs as that of a mid-sized European country, which really shows the impact on employment alongside GDP.
Wow, well there's certainly some strong data there. When we think about Europe, we know the International Monetary Fund has done some work here as well, looking at Europe but also Central Asia. They estimate that if gender inequality was eliminated entirely, you could see GDP growth across those regions of 10 to 15% — so some really significant growth that could be had from eliminating existing gender inequality. That said, the implementation of gender-responsive budgeting is not without challenges. What are some of the challenges that governments and others might face when seeking to embed GRB?
So something we've outlined in our report is the significant challenges GRB and governments face. One of these is the lack of data on the impacts of gender equality on budgets, and governments often lack the tools and frameworks to address these impacts effectively. In addition, there can also be institutional resistance — government departments or governments that haven't used this before and don't feel very confident adopting it right now. So that's another element, and there's a bit of a cultural shift that has to happen for it to work.
Yeah, and there are some really effective strategies that could be employed to make sure this goes in the right direction. It's crucial for governments to undertake training initiatives on gender analysis and budgeting techniques, to upskill their workforce and move towards a more gender-equal society.
Yes. Countries such as Kazakhstan and Austria have made significant progress in integrating GRB into their budgetary processes to date. Austria is actually one of the very few countries worldwide that has integrated GRB into its constitution, and the Austrian government states that GRB is an essential instrument in establishing gender mainstreaming within its government policies — and in assigning clear responsibilities, which makes government departments accountable for their gender policy commitments. So these are just some of the practical examples of how GRB can lead to real change in society.
The core message is really that gender-responsive budgeting is essential for creating a more equitable society, by acknowledging and addressing the unique needs and challenges faced by both women and men.
That's right — we cannot afford to ignore these disparities if we want a fair and just world for everyone. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to GRB. A wide variety of initiatives, across different institutions and with varying scopes, are possible, with numerous and different approaches and tools ranging from relatively low to relatively high resource-intensive. Examples of such methods and tools include gender impact assessments, gender-disaggregated incidence analysis of the budget, and gender scrutiny of the budget.
So thank you very much for your time today. We've crammed a lot in on the importance of gender-responsive budgeting. To read and discover more about our in-depth insights and recommendations, please visit ACCA's website.
