Project description

Title: Genderorientierte Fiskalpolitik
Commissioned by: Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)
Country: Latin America, across national boundaries
Lead executing agency: Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO)
Overall term: September 2003 to August 2009

Context

Macroeconomic analyses show that a greater degree of equality between men and women has a positive effect on social conditions generally and leads to greater economic growth. The gearing of public policy to gender equality is considered indispensable to poverty reduction. Effective gender equality policy must start with public budgeting processes. Several Latin American countries already have experience on the national and municipal levels with integrating gender aspects into budgeting processes. What is lacking is the systematisation and linking up of this experience across national boundaries. This shortcoming is hindering knowledge transfer and cooperation.

Objective

The project enables budget experts in governmental and non-governmental institutions and organisations in selected countries and municipalities in Latin America to make use of Latin American experience on integrating gender criteria into public budgeting processes.

This has the effect of enabling governments to account for the impacts their budgeting policies have on gender relations and equality between men and women. Gender relations are to become a point to be taken into consideration in governmental and economic policy.

In the long term, these measures are indirectly to benefit women and indigenous population groups, who suffer greater structural discrimination.

The anchoring of the ideas of participatory development and of good governance in the minds of political actors are side benefits of the project. Analytical capacities and social control on the part of civil society organisations are necessary for the altering of technical procedures within the budgeting process.

Approach

The project supports knowledge management of the subject on the regional level in Latin America and upgrades experts through process-oriented training. It offers advisory services on the instruments and methods used for the integration of the gender perspective into public budgeting processes.

Further information

• Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)
  www.flacso.edu.mx
• Fondo de Población de las Naciones Unidas (UNFPA)
  www.unfpa.org.mx
• Fondo de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas para la Mujer
  Oficina Regional para México, Centroamérica, Cuba y República Dominicana
  www.unifem.org.mx
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
  Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean
  www.undp.org/rblac
• Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL)
  www.eclac.cl