Transformative financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments: 

Expectations from Financing for Development Conference 

This book was produced by the United Women Banja Luka in 2007 under the UNIFEM supported Initiative for Introducing Gender Sensitive Budgeting in the Area of Domestic Violence on Local and Entity Level in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The publication captures the results of several months work on analysis of the budgets of four public institutions working on social protection in Republika Srpska. It consists of all data we collected during analysis of the budgets in targeted public institutions. The book consists of three parts.

The publication analyzes the aggregate impact of women’s organizations around the world that received grants from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ MDG3 Fund. Including results from 78% of the grantees, this analysis demonstrates the huge reach and transformation that is possible when organizations working to build women’s collective power for change receive serious resources for an extended period of time, with flexibility to refine their strategies to adapt to shifting contexts.

Decentralization has sometimes been presented as a magic bullet for both development and democracy. Since nearly everyone, from world leaders to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to donors, agrees that development and democracy both fail unless women are included on an equal footing with men, successful decentralization should make government more accessible, accountable, and responsive to women.But does it?

This book aims to contribute to the evolving understanding of public expenditure management as a political, rather than a purely technical, process. In particular, it explores the ways in which a rights approach can contribute to strengthening pro-poor voice and outcomes in budget processes. It identifies issues, partners, tools and methods that may help development actors to support citizen accountability and a pro-poor, gender-equitable, focus in public expenditure management.

This review of current patterns of planning and funding in post-conflict settings reveals a persistent gender bias, in which women's needs and issues are systematically underfunded. The paper addresses a wide range of questions in the broad area of planning and financing for gender equality in post-conflict settings.

Considering revenue collection and taxation as a strategy in work for women's rights and poverty alleviation is important. Different forms of taxation, and the complexities of taxation systems, frequently include a number of gender biases. For example, consumption taxes may be biased against poor women who spend a larger proportion of their incomes on consumption goods. It is important to understand and eliminate these biases for both gender and social equity.

This article takes a closer look at the gender budgeting statement in the Union Budget 2007-08 in India and reveals that programmes and allocations remain plagued by mistakes, with several schemes wrongly prioritised as being exclusively for women. Economic and Political Weekly April 21, 2007