Photo: Gonzalo Pizarro/UNDPNational economic policies and plans need to recognize the roles and contributions of men, women, boys and girls, and address their needs equitably. However, even gender-responsive policies and plans often fail to improve gender equality and empower women because insufficient resources are allocated to implement them. Although resources alone will not achieve gender equality, ensuring adequate financing is a necessary step. While taxes are a key source of financing for such initiatives, tax reforms can increase the tax burden on the poorest women, and at the same time fail to generate enough revenues to fund programmes needed to improve their lives. Gender-responsive planning and budgeting ensures that fiscal resources are generated and allocated in a way that affects women and men equitably.

UNDP helps development planners, researchers and civil society to make development planning and practice more gender-responsive.

Some specific examples of UNDP’s work in this area include

• Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative in Africa (GEPMI-Africa): This initiative is designed to increase the effectiveness of economic policies and poverty reduction strategies in Africa so that they benefit poor women and men more equitably.
• Developing a Gender Needs Assessment tool and training government officials and civil society groups to implement it. The tool helps to assess the needs and estimate the costs of programmes that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Gender and Taxation Initiative: analyzing the nature and composition of taxation and current tax reform efforts.

Other areas of UNDP’s work in gender-responsive planning and budgeting include:

• Providing technical support to mainstreaming gender equality into national development plans and sectoral strategies
• Advocating for the recognition of unpaid work in policy making
• Helping women to participate in planning, budgeting and policy-making processes
• Tracking and monitoring policy implementation and service delivery to women.

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