November 2011| No. 12 Gender Budgeting – An Equality Policy Strategy by Elisabeth Klatzer and Barbara Stiegler 1. I NTRODUCTION Gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting are fix­tures of the debates and documents of the international women’s movement. Politically active women all over the world have developed gender mainstreaming as a strategy to enable them to emerge from their powerless­ness, both real and perceived, in relation to political ac­tors. The purpose of these new strategies is to eliminate injustices in gender relations and to get rid of all forms of discrimination based on gender. 2. W HAT I S G ENDER B UDGETING ? Gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting are strate­gies to be implemented by organisations and institu­tions, such as administrations. They lead to changes in decision-making processes in these organisations. The strategies are therefore not confined to special projects for women but rather to an organisation’s everyday op­erations. Such operations are scrutinised in terms of gen­der equality. This involves systematic procedures inside organisations ordered by management and implemented by all employees. The analysis of all operational domains and meas­ures, all products and every part of an organisation forms the core of gender mainstreaming. Implicit in the concept of gender is that gender relations are culturally and socially determined and constantly reproduced. The question of how social structures contribute to the inces­sant reproduction of certain assignments and life situa­tions for men and women is decisive. Gender analyses concern the production and specific characteristics of life and work situations in which men and women differ. A gender analysis, therefore, not only enquires about the differences between men and women in a particular group, but also about how these differences are pro­duced and what contribution is made by the measures one is investigating. Gender budgeting is the application of the principle of gender mainstreaming to financial and budget policy: in other words, to public revenues and expenditures. The European Council defines gender budgeting as follows: »Gender budgeting is the application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. Gender budgeting means a gender-based assessment of budgets and incorporates a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gen­der equality.« 1 Dr Elisabeth Klatzer is an economist and social scientist working as a freelance researcher and consultant, for example, for the Watch Group Gender and Public Finance, feministATTAC and the European Gender Budgeting Network. Dr Barbara Stiegler is head of Women’s and Gender Issues at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn. 1 Council of Europe(2005), Gender budgeting. Final report of the Group of specialists on gender budgeting(EG-S-GB), Strasbourg.(http:// www.coe.int/equality)