Background paper prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat by Khabele Matlosa, Research Director, Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) Johannesburg, South Africa.

This paper is an attempt to measure the effectiveness of Gender Budgeting as a tool for women empowerment. In recent years, Gender Budget Initiatives have emerged as an effective way to bridge gender gaps. First step towards this goal was taken by Australia, South Africa and Philippines followed by other developed and less developed countries including India.

The article examines the two main strategies adopted by the Government of India for institutionalizing gender responsive budgeting to highlight what has gone wrong and what needs to be fixed in order to achieve better outcomes for women. This article by Yamini Mishra and Navanita Sinha was published in Economic and Political Weekly.

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 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 programme was launched in late 2006 to strengthen democratic governance and promote women's human rights through support for policy planning and budgeting processes to incorporate a gender perspective. The programme was implemented in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, and Moldova with funding from the Austrian Development Cooperation and Cooperation with Eastern Europe and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

This paper uses examples from Australia and the Pacific Island Countries and Territorities to address the following questions:How can we assess a government's achievements in gender responsive budgeting? How can gender responsible budgeting be made sustainable in the face of change? What can we expect from GRBs? The paper was presented in a context of increasing evidence that GRB are a positive force in promoting a more equitable distribution of public resources and benefits of development for women and improving overall budgetary processes and outcomes.

This Commonwealth Secretariat publication provides a conceptual framework for work on gender responsive budgets, traces the evoluation of work in this area and provides information on country initiatives. This is a crucial resource for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners.

This article is about Gender Responsive budgets in poland.

The article draws attention to the numerous assumptions relating to the proportion of allocations under a scheme that directly benefits women which unfortunately form the basis of the Gender Budgeting exercise. Several of these assumptions seem unrealistic and such unacceptable assumptions weaken the relevance of this particular Gender Budgeting exercise.