Posted by Teresa Curristine and Richard Allen[1]
International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrates the achievements of women worldwide, while calling for action to advance gender equality globally. We are reminded today that the COVID crisis has widened existing inequalities and disproportionately impacted women. Reflecting these challenges, the theme of this year’s IWD is Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World. This celebrates the role and hard work of women during the crisis but also calls for action to address its impact on women.
Public financial management (PFM) has an important role to play in helping to translate gender goals and policies into action such as a country’s national development plan and budget. It is not only about ensuring that gender programs and activities are funded, but also about providing a gender lens through which to view the budget.
Over the past couple of years, the PFM blog has published a series of articles on various aspects of gender budgeting, including several workshops organized by the IMF. We offer below a recap of these articles and hope you enjoy reading them again.
- The most recent blog addresses the gender budgeting theme directly and examines its relationship with the COVID crisis and recovery (Engendering the Recovery: Budgeting with Women in Mind).
- A review of the potential benefits of the new PEFA framework on gender budgeting (Can Public Financial Management Encourage More Opportunities for Men and Women? PEFA Can Tell you How!) and a contrary view (Why PEFA Does Not Need a Gender Budgeting Framework).
- A progress report on gender budgeting outcomes in Austria, one of the pioneering countries in this field, which shows that reporting on gender budgeting outcomes increased between 2013 and 2018 but not universally across all government ministries and agencies (First Results of Gender-Responsive Budgeting in Austria).
- Two IMF-organized regional workshops on gender budgeting in Central Africa, April 2019 (IMF Holds Seminar on Implementing Gender Responsive Budgeting In Central Africa) and Southern Africa, October 2019 (Fiscal Transparency and Gender Budgeting in Southern Africa).
- A seminar for Francophone African countries on how PFM practices and tools can contribute to gender equality outcomes, May 2020 (Implementing Gender Budgeting in Francophone Africa).
- A 5-day remote course on gender budgeting organized by the IMF for 25 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, February 2021 (Sub-Saharan Africa Course on Gender Budgeting).
[1] Teresa Curristine and Richard Allen are the Joint Editors of the PFM Blog.
Note: The posts on the IMF PFM Blog should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.
