Methodology of gender budgeting
(principal statements taking into account
state governmental reforms in Russia)

Definition

Gender sensitive budgeting is a set of different tools, mechanisms and institutions that are aimed to turn a gender approach into a requirement for the national policy. Gender sensitive budgeting – it is a system of apportionment of the social components of the state budget/ resources spent on policy of equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women. It is an open system for conduction of public expertise, discussion and lobbying.

Gender sensitive budget is not a different type of budget in comparison with the existing one, it could be considered as its specific modification (targeting transformation). It helps to investigate such issues as: what you are managing, consequences of the decision taken, increasing of their effectiveness using international socio-economic technologies.

Model

In comparison with the gender budgeting models of developed countries (Canadian, Swedish, Australian, where gender budgets are part of the state budgeting policy), it is possible to provide public lobbying of the expertise of the budgetary decision and projects. From this point of view Russian model is similar to USA model except the lack of the influence of the NGOs that are playing important role in the life of the society in the USA. The lack of interest to gender sensitive budgeting observed in the USA and the first steps were done by scientists and women NGOs. The other step could be stimulating of the NGO interest to gender budgeting and the result will depend on the level of understanding of the government officials of the necessity to use gender budgeting at all levels (federal, regional and local). Ideally the gender sensitive budgeting should be incorporated at the budgeting process at the state level.

Participants

Government officials at all levels, women non-governmental organizations, experts, mass media representatives, specialists in different fields. Forms of cooperation – joint working groups, commissions, hearings, seminars, conferences organized at different types of budgeting process discussion– elaboration of the portfolio of proposals to draft budget, its discussion, participation in implementation activities, financed from the state budget, monitoring of budget implementation, public assessment of budgetary reporting, publications, mass media performances.

Conditions for introduction

• Presence of the functioning national machinery on improvement of the women status and gender regulations (legal, organizational, economic aspects; incorporation of the gender oriented indices to management processes, including programmes, plans, assessment of activities of all ministerial institutions.
  
• Preparation of the transparent budget, accessible for public community at federal and local levels. For achieving that, it is necessary to provide the following activities: a) training on usage of the methodology of the gender budgeting, organization of the public awareness campaigns in the mass media, procedures of joint discussion with NGOs representatives; b) legal status of indicated above conditions in the Budgetary Code.
  
• Accompanied legal acts – adoption of new laws on incorporation of the social (gender expertise) into the decision making processes at all levels and about social standards and financial norms and its gender component and also introduction of the gender issues into the Law on Public Chamber (both for federal and regional levels).

Areas for application

Areas of application of the gender sensitive budgeting is regulation of the state resources in accordance with the living standards of the population. That includes the following spheres: private incomes, labor and employment, provision of pensions, social insurance, education, health, culture, social support of disables people, support to maternity and childhood, support to poor, policy development on consumer prices and tariffs, taxation of natural persons, housing policy that means: interrelation directions of the state and the population where state resources are involved and that could affect the status of men and women.

Usage levels, addresses

In the circulated system, such as state budget, all the decision that lead to redistribution of resources in favor of concrete priorities – in our case gender priorities – are possible when the budget is specifically structured in accordance with power distribution and three levels of budget.

First level – federal budget and budgets of the federal extrabudgetary foundations (Pension Foundation, Social Insurance foundation and Medical insurance foundation). Federal budget – is a form of formation and spending of financial resources, assigned for implementation of the goals and tasks of the central power authorities.

Second level – regional budgets of the subjects of the RF and budgets of the regional extra budgetary state foundations (regional branches of the social insurance and medical foundations, the Pension foundation has the federal status). Heads of the republics and oblasts are responsible for the regional budgets distribution.

Third level – local self-governance budgets (in the strict sense local self-governance is not state governance).

All these levels are connected with the categories of social transfers from extra budgetary foundations. Separation of the gender burden in the budgetary structure assumes introduction of the social (gender) classification into the Budgetary Code in accordance with the power levels and into the inter-budgetary and extra budgetary foundations. Some experience exists for the first and second levels that should be improved in future. As concerns the local self-governance budgets – the other task exists, special attention should be paid on vulnerable groups of population. For this task the technology of gender budgeting is the most crucial.

Classification of the budgetary articles

The budgetary classification plays an important role in budget analysis.

According to the definition, the budgetary classification consists of the group of expenses and incomes which are used for compilation of the budget. The following types of the budgetary classification were established:

Classification of incomes in accordance with the types of payments (taxes, customs, privatization incomes, rent of the state premises, its incomes and dividends, payment for natural resources and etc.

Classification of taxes, transmitted to budget, undergone great changes and consists of three groups (income taxes, property taxation, internal and external economic activities). This classification doesn’t underline taxes which are interesting for the gender budgeting. It is recommended to differentiate taxes. Otherwise it is impossible to mark men and women inputs that decrease the zone of economic substantiation which is equal to efficiency of decision taken in favor of men and women.

Classification of expenses on directions:

functional (according with the main directions of the state activities, such as management, defense, social policy, internal and external loans and etc.);

economic (current expenses and capital investments, the salary for government officials, and military men, pensions and welfare payment, scholarships, transfers to regions and population and etc should be covered from current expenses)

departmental (for juridical persons – managers of budgetary allocations and budget recipients, starting from responsible state bodies, further on to budgetary institutions and organizations)

Gender sensitive budgeting has a social classification (according to social demographic groups of population – men and women; working, pensioners, children, youth; urban and rural population and etc). Such grouping helps to substantiate gender budgets in accordance with expense distribution on sex, age, status, profession, place of residence.

Gender-oriented grouping of budgetary expenses

From point of view of relations between state and population, differentiated by gender budgetary articles could be devited into three categories: direct, indirect and influencing.

Direct. Articles, which indicated gender of the addressee – men or women and their status. For example, state expenses on pregnancy and childbirth – are covering only for women, and expenses on military call-up covers men, welfare payment for children to unwed mothers are paid for women, expenses on modernization of mines are covering men. There are a few socio gender evident expenses. But eh task is in elaboration of the specialized programme with elaboration of the special article in the budget that will support activities of the government, non-governmental organizations aimed at improving of the women (or achieving of the “gender equality”).

Indirect. In comparison with the first group they forms the majority – expenses on education, health, basic and social pensions, that are covered from budget, welfare payments for unemployed and poor (incomes are less then the level of living standard, housing subsidies (support to local budgets in covering housing-communal services). These articles are more important for women, due to high percentage of women among poor, pensioner.

Influencing. This articles are not directly address population, but are influencing on its status, living conditions, status of the social sphere. The expenditure part – managerial expenses, military expenses, international activities, external debts, ecological expenses and liquidation of emergence situations, investment to national economy, science and etc, which covers population unevidently.

Structure of the budget

Previously the budget structure consisted of three levels – federal, regional (subject of the RF) and local (municipal). Starting from 2006 the new structure of the budget will come into force that will consist of 4 levels including additional level of self-governance local level (budgets of towns and rural settlements). In accordance with the administrative reform, the number of such budgets would increase due to the fact that each 10 000 people will have its own self-governance structure. The self-governance has to have property and taxation rights, including voluntary rate paying of the population. The specific task of the gender expertise at that time could be critical tracing of the transition to self-governance and solution of the social problems by it. At that time it is important to achieve maximal registration of incomes and expenses of the population specifying it by groups of population. From the other side, at the time of increasing differentiation by managerial level, the importance of enlarged budgetary structure (construct) was increased for the critical assessment of occurred changes. It could be compilation of the of the consolidated budget at all levels – state plus self-governance. Conduction of the assessment and audit by the public organization is impossible without this preprequisite.

Basic indicators

Some problems with the technology of the social (gender) budget in the budgetary construct itself exist. It is impossible to overview macro-social indicators in the budget, such as salary/wages payment for people working in the budgetary sphere. For analyzing its part in the federal budget specialized calculation should be provided to get the following growth, dynamics, comparison. As concerns the consolidated budget such calculations could be made only my the specialist form the Ministry of Finance, who has all required figures, but not the analyst form the trade-unions and public organizations, eve not the scientist on their behalf.

Currently, there are no division of indicators in accordance with the socio-group characteristics. Nobody could identify how much were spent on working population, pensioners, children, youth, men and women, people with high and low incomes. All of them are using different budget sources: salary/wage payments, pensions, welfare payments, allocations for services. All the indicator for gender budgeting should be constructed “in volume” but not “flatly”. For example, for the employee not just salary should be taken into consideration, but also social payments, for pensioners – additional benefits and social service should be added to pension rate, for children we should add education and health. This approach will increase the quality of the gender expertise in assessment of the resource distribution in accordance with public groups and gender. Additional statistics should be collected for that.

Financial flows

Gender analysis of financial flows bears in mind management of usage of the resources for social purposes, including resources from different level budgets and state extra budgetary foundations and also consideration of the financial resources directed on social purposes by productive plants and population. For examples, in the medical sphere all expenses are covered from four sources: budget, medical insurance foundation, budgets of the different organizations, population. The same situation is observed in educational and re-training spheres. Women are particularly interested in development of different social institutions which are financed by social foundations, social programmes of different productive plants organized for employees of these plants. These programmes are more easily could be considered at regional level in the drafts of the regional budgets.

Methods

The gender sensitive budgeting methodology includes the following methods:

• analytical (consideration of laws, programmes, budgetary expenses disaggregated by sex)
• experts (assessment of the consequences of adopted measures on men and women),
• normative (comparison with norms and social standards disaggregated by sex),
• prognosis (comparison of differentiated prognosis of socio-economic events disaggregated by sex),
• comparative (comparison with international models, international experience and national achievements),
• programmatic (elaboration of the programmes targeted on improvement of the women status),
• sociological (conduction of the survey among men and women on gender oriented activities).

All these should be accompanied by a great number of memorandums, tables, calculations and other information that will reveal budget ideas and indicators form the point of view of the authors of the gender budget.

Among recommended methods we suggest our know-how: compilation of so called social matrix according to population groups. For example social matrix of budgetary expenses on children (such as education, health, social policy and social services on current budgetary expenses and budgetary programmes, welfare payment on children from budgets an insurance foundation) shows, that children receive twisely less from the state budget in comparison with the rest population of the country. That conclusion is important and could be used as an argument for elaboration of proposals on improvement of the children status.

Organizational steps

• determination of the organizations-participants
• training of experts
• determination of goals
• collection of the information
• conduction of the analysis and expertise
• substantiation of conclusions
• elaboration of proposals, arguments and calculations for them
• "fitting" the proposals (pilot projects)
• lobbying (participation in the budget elaboration, discussion of activities, assessment of results.
• gender audit – comparison of the results with fixed targets and its financial indicators

Distinguish features at regional level

There are two important aspects are regional level, that should be taken into consideration:

Firstly, the social managerial activities were transmitted to regional level. Consequently, the overwhelming part of the budget expenses are social expenses and it is impossible to expect serious increase of the social part at the expense of other budgetary articles, such as housing, law enforcement bodies and etc. The other possibility is to reveal untargeted expenses.

Secondly, there are two sources of budgeting in the budgetary sphere: state and self-governmental. The budget of the subject of the RF which is the governmental one couldn’t be considered as a regulator to local budget as it was in consolidated budget of the Federation.

According to the law on distribution of authorities and local self-governance, the independence of the regional budgets in connected with independence in taxation rights. Hence, the management of the subject as the social institution is limited by local level. In this case, the subject could force the settlement to conduct any additional actions financing it – that is considered as the problem of social mandate.

That leads to limitation and differentiation of the rights of concrete citizens, including people living in gender sensitive regions: the existence of such settlements is obvious, they have limited access to medical treatment, absence of maternity hospitals, kindergardens, school is far removed and children can’t come to school due to the absence of the transportation services. All these happens because of the lack of budgetary resources. The task of the gender sensitive budgeting in this case is to determine such regions and investigate the volume and the sources for financing. NGOs could assist in solving such problems by lobbying the interests of the region and to show the concrete financial resources that could be used.

The most important innovation in these sphere is the rights to introduce voluntary rate payments for public needs. That makes gender sensitive budgeting most acute and could serve as the mobilizing factor for the citizens activities.

Annexes

1. Working Cycle




2. Gender budget analysis indicators (indices)




3. Steps of gender budgeting implementation (technology)