7/10/2005
Gender Budgets And Valuing Women's Voluntary Work

Using gender-responsive budgets to recognize and strengthen women's role in governance and resource allocation in Latin America is the focus of a new initiative launched by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme. The two-year project, "Engendering budgets: Valuing women's voluntary contributions to national development in Latin America," will work to mainstream a gender perspective into local government expenditure plans. Through this project, UNIFEM and UNV will make women's unpaid and volunteer contributions to the health of their communities, which is still largely unrecognised, both visible and valued.

The use of gender-responsive budget analysis is a valuable tool to address inequalities that exist between government revenues collected from, and expenditures that benefit, women and girls as compared to men and boys. Gender-responsive budgets are not separate budgets for women, nor do they try to increase spending only on women-specific programmes. Rather, budgets that reflect a gender perspective aim to ensure that women and men benefit equally from the distribution and use of public resources. They also recognize ways in which women contribute to their societies and economies through their unpaid labour in the productive economy as well as in their roles as caregivers for families and communities. As such, they provide a means for governments to translate commitments to gender equality and women's human rights into action.

The project will take place in five Latin American countries where previous and continuing efforts to bolster women's participation in local decision-making processes serve as best practice examples. The counterparts include the Municipality of Rosario in Argentina, the Instituto de Formación Femenina Integral in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the Instituto de Administración Municipal in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Municipality of Cuenca, Ecuador, and the Federación Popular de Mujeres de Villa El Salvador in Peru.

UN Volunteers placed with each counterpart will sensitize communities, civil society groups and local governments on the project, as well as organize meetings and seminars to foster discussion on gender budgeting. By acting as intermediaries in this process, UN Volunteers are expected to advance the cause of gender equality in governmental planning and budgetary processes. They will provide training to a range of stakeholders — women's collectives, civil servants, gender advocates — on applying gender budget analysis, as well as promote volunteering for development in their day-to-day work.

Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of UNIFEM, and Ad de Raad, Executive Coordinator of UNV, signed the project at UNIFEM's headquarters in New York City. "UNIFEM has supported the development of gender budgets in 34 countries," said Ms Heyzer. "We have shown that analyzing budgets from a gender perspective can enhance transparency and accountability in how public resources are raised and spent. Budgets are used to shape policies, set priorities and provide the means to meet the social and economic needs of all citizens. This is why we launched a campaign in 2001 to get every country to commit to adopt a gender responsive budget initiative by 2015."

Mr de Raad added: "Volunteering represents an enormous reservoir of skills, energy, and local knowledge which, when properly supported, can be a strategic resource for women to make their voices heard and their actions felt. This is one key element in achieving the MDGs, and UNV is fully committed to work with UNIFEM towards that goal."

For more information on gender-responsive budgets, visit this web site