The purpose of this paper, prepared by Raman Sohal Research Officer, International Development Research Centre, June 2005, is to present an overview of the existing and potential approaches and tools for identifying gender gaps at the local level.

This report highlights the work carried out by UNIFEM and its partners throughout the lifetime of the project, Local Level Gender Responsive Budgets Initiatives. The overall objective of the programme was to advocate for and support the transformation of economic governance and leadership into a more gender responsive governance in order to improve gender equality and increase women's participation in decision making process that shape their lives.

This publication results from widespread participation in a UNDP network discussion entitled Towards a "Local Governance and Development Agenda: Lessons and Challenges". The report aims to summarize and disseminate this interesting e-discussion, and to link people, knowledge products and projects related to these relevant topics, from the local to the global area and vice versa. Its views, approaches and strategies should contribute to current debates, and lead to more effective support from UNDP, UNCDF and UN-HABITAT in helping societies attain high-quality local governance.

This report by Nalini Burn, Larabi Jaidi and Hayat Zirari (2005) is a diagnostic study designed to analyse the potential of gender mainstreaming in the budget process of Morocco's communes. This study, which is part of a an international initiative supported by UNIFEM and the European Union, is concerned with gender mainstreaming in budget systems and practices at local level and within a context of decentralisation.

The guide was produced in the context of the Local Level GRB programme in Morocco.

This paper was prepared as a background to the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre and Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) International workshop on engendering and empowering governance indicators, New Delhi, April 2005.

The paper suggests how the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS), developed and implemented in 14 countries over the last ten years with financial support from the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), can be used to facilitate gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) at the local level.  In particular, it looks at how CBMS can be used to support local-level GRB (LLGRB) initiatives of civil society and local government.

The first debates on gender-responsive budgeting initiatives emerged in Switzerland in 1994, The choice of methods for conducting gender-differentiated analyses and the means by which they are conducted have been informed, and continue to be informed, by the relatively early emergence of gender-responsive budgeting (hereafter GRB) as an issue in Swiss public debate, by the circumstances under which GRB emerged, and by the fact that parliaments at local (municipal/communal), cantonal and federal levels and citizens in Switzerland's direct democracy retain considerable influence over public

The aim of this publication is to provide an overview of the latest research findings and discussions in the Canton of Basel-Stadt with regard to “engendering budgets”. The study includes an innovative impact of public expenditure on unpaid care work.

This article by J. Vanishree (2008) focuses on the experiments carried out by Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on Gender Responsive Budgeting and Local Governance. Even though many studies show that decentralized local governance is struggling to establish itself as a self governing institution, experiments from selected Indian states show that the potential can be unleashed.