The series of Gender Briefing Notes is designed to help EC officials working in development cooperation to easily identify and address gender equality issues in specific sectors and thematic areas. This paper focuses on gender budgeting and its usefulness in the context of new aid instruments. It complements the "Mainstreaming Gender Equality in EC Development Cooperation" toolkit. It highlights how gender budgeting may be used by both partner countries and donors to make programme-based approaches more gender-sensitive. It shows how this will contribute to more effective and more efficient development and to greater gender equality.