Background paper prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat in May 2007 by Debbie Budlender, Community Agency for Social Enquiry, Cape Town, South Africa. This paper attempts to make the case for financing gender equality for development, and to explore how this can be done. Because the issues related to financing gender equality for development are so numerous, the paper obviously cannot discuss all in equal detail. It thus pays particular attention to the ways in which the context of such financing has been changing. These include the Monterrey consensus and Paris Declaration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the new aid modalities and other aspects of donor priorities and instruments. The paper places special emphasis on gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) as a means of promoting gender equality and monitoring progress.