Beyond GDP and Public Policies for Gender Equality: Gender Budgeting in Asia Pacific.

Abstract

The paper analyses gender budgeting as a fiscal innovation to translate the public policies into 'beyond GDP’ commitments incorporating a gender lens. Earmarking a specific proportion of fiscal allocations for gender budgeting can be only a second best principle of gender budgeting. With the advent of fiscal decentralisation, a few countries in the Asia Pacific region have experimented with gender budgeting as a PFM tool of accountability and fiscal transparency. However the lack of gender disaggregated data and lack of flexibility of finance at local levels thwarted the process of deepening gender budgeting. The legally mandated gender budgeting process led by Finance Ministries has been found as the sustainable model of gender budgeting to translate resources into results. Fiscal marksmanship (deviation between budget estimates and actual spending) is an important prerequisite for establishing such result-based fiscal frameworks of gender budgeting.