“After I spoke, another panelist grabbed my arm and said (on live television), ‘Let me explain to you how this works’.” (Ana Patricia Muñoz)
“They accused me of elitist perspectives because I used terms like ‘care economy’ and of straying from “core” public finance questions. They maintained that gender could never be a core public finance question.” (Lekha Chakraborty)
“Working in public finance reveals how fiscal choices can mirror and perpetuate social inequalities, sharpening disparities in wealth, opportunity, and access to resources. A lack of diversity among decision-makers further reinforces these inequalities.” (Trinish Padayachee)
These are some quotes from our new book “Women in Public Finance: Stories of Gender in Budgeting” that brings women’s perspectives on what it took them to work in public financial management (PFM) and what it meant to them. PFM has long been considered a purely “technical” field. In recent years, there has been increasing discussion on the outcomes of PFM, the connection between policies and social outcomes. However, the “inside” of PFM or questions around the PFM community are rarely discussed or revealed, such as who designs the PFM systems, whose experiences shape them, or how the identities of those working within them influence reforms and their outcomes. And although women have been increasingly present in the field in the last decades, their experiences, perspectives and contributions have rarely been documented.
Our book [link] seeks to place this missing conversation at the center. With narratives from women from all continents, whose careers span ministries of finance, international financial institutions, academia, civil society, or independent consultancies, the book offers an unprecedented reflection on what it means to be a woman working inside one of the most influential, yet traditionally male-dominated fields of government. As Prime Minister Mia Mottley notes in her Preface: “[the book] does not only ask us to celebrate women in the field. It asks us to listen to what their experiences reveal about the systems we have inherited, the reforms we still require, and the future we must build.”
When we both began working on this book, we had spent years in PFM, contributing to reforms focused on budgeting, and its social and gender outcomes. Yet, we always thought it was fascinating to look at who are the people working across PFM, particularly women, whose perspectives have historically been underrepresented. This “inside” perspective reveals that the “personal” and the “professional” are not separate domains; our identities, experiences and institutional positions inevitably influence our work within the PFM space.
The book, therefore, brings together first-person stories and reflections of 22 women with careers in PFM and gender budgeting. The premise of the book is that lived experiences and commitments to personal values matter and shape outcomes of public policies, including gender budgeting.
The book goes beyond gender budgeting by focusing on gender in budgeting. Gender budgeting asks how public resources affect women and men differently and how fiscal policy can reduce gender inequalities. Gender in budgeting puts at the center the lived experiences and personal stories of women who work on budgets, and asks why their knowledge counts, how institutional cultures shape fiscal decision-making, and why the supposedly technical institutions of public finance continue to reproduce particular norms, values, and hierarchies.
At a time when progress on gender equality is increasingly contested, the book provides both an important institutional perspective and a new analytical lens for understanding how more inclusive, accountable, and equitable PFM systems can be achieved. It offers a distinctive contribution by:
- Providing, through the lens of PFM, a broader and often overlooked dimension of many male dominated fields, namely the gendered nature of the institutions and professionals responsible for designing and implementing policies.
- Documenting institutional histories that are rarely recorded. The experiences of women working in ministries of finance, international financial institutions, and other related organizations constitute an important part of the history of PFM and gender budgeting.
- Bridging theory and practice. By combining personal experience with professional expertise, the book connects academic debates on gender-responsive budgeting, feminist institutionalism, and PFM with the realities of designing and implementing reforms.
- Providing comparative insights across institutional and national contexts. Drawing on contributions from practitioners in the Global South and Global North and across institutions, the book highlights common institutional dynamics while illustrating how gender-responsive reforms are shaped by different political, administrative, and cultural environments.
Our ambition with this book is not to stop here, but to open a much-needed conversation about gender in budgeting, PFM, and the wider ecosystem of economics practitioners. We invite researchers, practitioners, public institutions, universities, and development partners to contribute their own experiences and perspectives, and to examine how public finance affects gender equality, but also how power, identity, and institutional culture operate within the profession itself. Ultimately, equitable public finance requires us to look inside and reflect on what kind of professional community we choose to build.
Women in Public Finance: Gender in Budgeting is published by Routledge.
