Category: EU

BELGIUM – Looking Beyond Our Nose!

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Interview with Dr. Saskia Ravesloot, BTC, Belgian Development Agency, Brussels

Your activities and experiences with Gender Budgeting and G(R)B model

 

What made you get active in Gender Budgeting? What are your present activities?

 

In October 2001, I was a researcher at the Centre for Women’s Studies of the Antwerp University. While working on a gender mainstreaming project for the Belgian Government, I participated in one of the first large-scale High Level International Conferences on Gender Budgeting Initiatives (Strengthening Economic and Financial Governance), which was organised in Brussels. This inspiring conference gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with concepts and tools of gender budgeting, to meet key authors like Diana Elson, Guy Hewitt and Rhonda Sharp and to learn from experiences in the field as for example, in Tanzania and Uganda. In this regard UNIFEM/Karen Judd’s paper on Gender Budgeting Initiatives shall be recommended for further reading.

From then on, I have seen gender budgeting as the key for success when the aim was to integrate gender in whatever strategy, policy or process.

As a member of the OECD/DAC Gendernet I am currently contributing to the reflections on minimum standards for the Gender Marker. The final output of this informal working group on the DAC gender equality policy marker aims at developing new guidelines for improving the application of the Gender Marker in a more coherent manner among OECD/DAC member states.

Could you please summarise your experiences with Gender Budgeting…

Continue Reading BELGIUM – Looking Beyond Our Nose!

POLAND: Looking Beyond Our Nose

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Anna Zachorowska is Erasmus Coordinator at the Institute of Economics, Finance and Management der Jagiellonian University, Poland.

  • What made you get active in Gender Budgeting? What do your present activities in this area look like?

I am an academic whose main area of research is feminist economics. I am writing mainly about macroeconomics and gender. Since I was theoretically interested in this subject in 2012, a group of human rights activists from Krakow asked me to become a part of project concerned with the city of Krakow. This a group of activists we have prepared a gender budget of the city of Krakow.

  • Could you please summarise your experiences with Gender Budgeting in national projects.

The project that I was personally involved in was a national project concentrated on the second biggest city in Poland – Krakow. Additionally I was also involved in the report concerning the possibility of adoptation of Austrian gender responsive budgeting in Poland, within the European project Exchange of good practices on gender equality.Continue Reading POLAND: Looking Beyond Our Nose

Gender Budgeting in the Work of the European Parliament and the EU Budget – Current practice or Grey Theory?

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“Europe will not be made all at once,
or according to a single plan. …
It will be built through concrete achievements
which first create a de facto solidarity.

Robert Schuman

You are looking for more detailed information. Find the full German version of this article here.  You might use Google Translate in order to to grasp the most essential information in English.

The aim of creating an economic power and everlasting peace in Europe is at the heart of the European project. Starting from this, it has developed into a community of common values: The principle of equality of women and men is an integral part of these values and has been enshrined in primary law. As a matter of fact one might find it worthwhile to ask if equality is also being pushed in the institutional set-up that constitutes the EU. Do EU organs and institutions fully embrace Gender Budgeting? An analysis of the following documents is to shed light on questions like this:

  1. The current resolution on Gender Mainstreaming in the work of the European Parliament from 2016;
  2. The European Parliament resolution of 9 June 2015 on the EU Strategy for equality between women and men post 2015;
  3. The study entitled “The EU Budget for Gender Equality“, which was released in 2015.

They prove that Gender Budgeting ranks on the EU agenda, yet that the road towards it has been a rocky one.Continue Reading Gender Budgeting in the Work of the European Parliament and the EU Budget – Current practice or Grey Theory?