Bakker, I., 2002, 'Fiscal policy, accountability and voice: the example of gender responsive budget initiatives', background paper for the Human Development Report (HDR) 2002, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Processes to bring broader public accountability for fiscal policy in ways that are sensitive to the needs of poor women and men are still in their infancy. Gender responsive budget initiatives (GRBIs) seek to widen governance and accountability structures by bringing women's voices to discussions on public spending, revenue-raising and debt. Accountability in the context of budgets involves four key issues: which players are involved in policy formulation and to what extent; how responsive government is to inputs from external stakeholders; how transparent the budget process is; and how credible policy commitments are when assessed against budgetary priorities. The representation and participation of people, including women, directly affected by budget allocation decisions is important, including as a way of strengthening democracy. However, GRBIs not only seek to increase women's participation in decision-making, they seek to strengthen women's capacity for effective participation, and government's capacity to undertake gender analyses and engender macroeconomic policies. The key questions that GRBIs address are: What impact does this fiscal measure have on gender equality? Does it reduce gender inequality; increase it; or leave it unchanged? Is there consistency between economic goals and social commitments? The paper concludes that gender responsive budgeting demonstrates the potential of participatory budgeting and analysis to make governments accountable to international and national commitments and bring a fairer distribution of public resources.

Can budget processes be used to claim rights and call governments to account? Who has the power to determine who gets what budget resources? Whilst often considered merely technical tools, budgets are in fact a political process. Starting from this basis, the authors show how a rights-based approach can strengthen pro-poor and gender-sensitive outcomes from public expenditure management. Starting with a detailed guide to the budget process, public expenditure management and policy, they move on to review the conceptual approaches to addressing human rights, entitlements, political accountability and citizenship through the budget process. Seven factors are identified which support citizen accountability and a pro-poor and gender-sensitive focus in the budget: · Constitutional framework and political culture oriented to citizenship and rights such as in India, South Africa and Uganda. · System of issue-based political competition such as in Brazil, Rajasthan (India) and South Africa. · Sufficient fiscal resources for wide-scale delivery of basic services such as in Brazil, India and South Africa. · Clear framework of policy goals, aligned to a vision of society with respect for social justice, and monitoring of policy goals by citizens. · Transparent systems of recording and reporting decisions and expenditure. · An active engaged civil society able to access information, produce analysis and hold government to account. · Active, informed citizens able to claim services that they are entitled to and hold service providers and policy makers to account.

Sharp, R., 2003, Budgeting for Equity: Gender Budget Initiatives within a Framework of Performance Oriented Budgeting, New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

Can performance-oriented budgeting serve as a framework for making budgets more gender responsive? This question is set in the context of recent public sector reforms to make public expenditure more 'results based' as part of the 'good governance' agenda. This framework looks at outcomes (i.e., what does the government want to achieve?), outputs (i.e., how does the government achieve this?) and performance reporting (i.e., how does it know if it is succeeding?). This fits well with the aims of gender responsive budget initiatives (GRBIs) and their concern with the impact on women and men of budgetary allocations. However, this paper also identifies limitations of performance-oriented budgeting, including the over emphasis in practice on efficiency rather than effectiveness indicators, as well as on quantitative rather than qualitative measures. A framework is outlined that links performance-oriented budgeting and gender responsive budgets. To make this work, a radical change to the conventional model is required. An important aspect of this is to reassess the meanings of economy, efficiency and effectiveness from a gender perspective, and to add a fourth 'e', equity.