Gender Budgeting in Europe by Angela O'Hagan & Elisabeth Klatzer

Author:Angela O'Hagan & Elisabeth Klatzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Favourable Conditions in the Phase of Implementation

Adoption of GB has still to be fully implemented. There has still to be a gender-aware budget in Iceland, and activities to date have not led to major changes in budget allocations. However, there is evidence of positive impact in relation to the goals of GB as defined by Rhonda Sharp (2003), since awareness and understanding of the gender impact of budgets is significantly better as is the understanding that budgets and policies must be changed and refined to promote equality.

Both local and state governments have offered training and published gender analyses in order to increase understanding of gender effects and accountability, both in the Budget Bill (since 2010) and in project reports. The process of implementing GB has brought about changes in government policy and resource allocation processes, as more analysis is being done and it is being made part of day-to-day operations instead of being a project-by-project basis. At the City of Reykjavik, gender analysis is now required for all resource allocation changes in the overall council budget, which makes the gender effects visible and part of the decision-making process. At the state level, this is apparent in the Public Finances Act that requires the State Budget Bill to outline how it will affect gender equality targets. The first budget bill since the adaptation of the legislation includes two examples from the Ministry of Welfare: one for health insurance; and the other for social security. The analysis from the proposed changes in health insurance states that since women use the system to a greater extent than men, more women will benefit from the changes than men. The second example is regarding pension and also states that the proposed changes of the social security system would benefit women to a greater extent than men (Alþingi 2016). Furthermore, the GB projects have led to improvements within the government, for example in public policy regarding nursing homes. Nursing homes are operated through service agreements with the government, so the Ministry of Welfare is adding a provision about a gender equality policy to the service agreements.

Many departmental GB projects have had beneficial results, for example in how appropriations are used, and have increased knowledge of the gender effects of the budget, even though they have not led to major changes in budget allocations. One such change is a three-year project conducted by the Ministry of Industries and Innovation on the issue of agricultural subsidies to farmers. In most cases there is joint ownership of farms by spouses but payments of subsidies could only go to one recipient which, in more than 80% of the cases, was the man. This is a structural barrier to the financial independence of women in farming, especially since pension fund contributions are withheld from these payments. The gender analysis led to changes in the Agricultural Agreement that was passed in Parliament in September 2016, where it is stated that spouses or cohabiting couples that have joint ownership of a farm can have the payment split (Stjórnartíðindi 2016).

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