What if budgets could help us revisit the shortcomings of mainstreaming by providing more concrete and measurable instruments? This article intends to contribute to this debate through some practical examples and a comparative analysis of gender sensitive budget experiences in Brazil and in Chile.

The publication presents a set of instruments for the analysis of public revenues and expenditures from a gender perspective. The authors analyzed basic categories of public expenditure in five municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Banovici, Bijeljina, Srebrenica, Travnik and Tuzla) with a view to provide solid arguments for the implementation of gender-budgets at local and national levels.

The resource book, produced by the Public Administration Research and Consultation Centre (PARC) of Cairo Univerisity in collaboration with the Egyptian National Council for women, explains performance based budgeting and ways of integrating gender into those budgets. The book, produced in Arabic, also provides a number of examples and practical tools.

The report published by the Egyptian National Council for Women, and available in English and Arabic, summarizes their success in mainstreaming gender into the Socio-Economic Development Plan by highlighting methods such as gender budgeting and performance based budgeting with a gender approach, and the subsequent impact on the national budget allocations.

This guide was developed in Kyrgyzstan to conduct appropriate training seminars among staff of ministries and agencies responsible for the development and implementation of social and economic policy. Guide covers a wide range of issues: the basic theory of gender equality, international standards and national obligations, the introduction of a gender perspective in the planning and implementation of sectoral policies and gender budgeting.

This publication supports the design and formulation of Gender Sensitive policies and budgets in the Health Sector. It is the result of the joint efforts of the Ministry of Health, through its National Associate Direction for Gender Equality, which belongs to the National Centre for Gender Equality and Reproductive Health, and the civil society organizations: FUNDAR, Centre for Analysis and Research and Gender Equality: Citizenship, Work and Family

This fact sheet was produced by UNIFEM in 2007 under the UNIFEM sub -regional programme "Gender-Responsive Budgeting in South East Europe: Advancing Gender Equality and Democratic Governance through Increased Transparency and Accountability launched in late 2006. The programme includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia. In the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, UNIFEM carried out a needs assessment of the budgetary processes and public finance reforms in October 2006.

The manual is addressed to representatives of civil society and aimed at increasing their participation in the development of local development programs and gender mainstreaming in the process. The publication presents the steps to formulate a development plan at the district level and discusses methods of gender analysis of the situation. It also identifies key challenges and opportunities in planning and budgeting process and includes the main strategic directions of development and planning for implementation of the plan.

The focus of this publication is to act as a guide to the practice of gender budgeting. It is not a first-step book. There are many publications which articulate the rationale for, the background to and the history of gender budgeting. This handbook assumes an understanding of gender, of the objectives of a gender equality strategy, of the ways in which gender inequality is manifest, of the need for structural change in order to tackle unintentional gender bias, of the basics of gender mainstreaming as a strategy to address gender equality.

The guide brings together and synthesises several innovative and tested strategies on gender responsive planning & implementation from across India. It is designed as a selflearning tool or a practitioner’s reference book that provides a knowledge base of experiences which can be used as a reference for gender responsive planning & implementation initiatives. It draws extensively from inputs provided by a cross section of policy makers, feminist economists, representatives from civil society and women’s organisations.