Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting: Imperatives for Equitable Public Expenditure

225 Pages·2016·4.31 MB·English

by  Cecilia Ng (eds.)

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ENVIRONMENT,
SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE 22
Cecilia Ng Editor
Gender Responsive
and Participatory
Budgeting
Imperatives for
Equitable Public
Expenditure
123
SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security,
Development and Peace
Volume 22
Series editor
Hans Günter Brauch, Mosbach, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10357
http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP.htm
http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP_22.htm
Cecilia Ng
Editor
Gender Responsive
and Participatory Budgeting
Imperatives for Equitable Public Expenditure
123
Editor
Cecilia Ng
PenangWomen’sDevelopmentCorporation
Penang
Malaysia
Licensed inMalaysia andSingapore to:
Strategic Information andResearch Development Centre
No.2 Jalan Bukit 11/2,46200Petaling Jaya,Selangor, Malaysia
Fax:[phone]
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://sird.gerakbudaya.com
for exclusive distribution in Malaysia andSingapore.
ISSN 2193-3162 ISSN 2193-3170 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs inEnvironment, Security, Development andPeace
ISBN978-3-319-24494-5 ISBN978-3-319-24496-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24496-9
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015950050
SpringerChamHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon
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Cover photo: Penang State and Local Government leaders with speakers and the main organising
committee of the GRB Conference. Seated from left are Maimunah Mohd Sharif (President of the
SebarangJayaMunicipalCouncil),PatahiyahIsmail(MayorofthePenangIslandCityCouncil),Chow
KonYeow(PenangStateExcomemberandChairoftheConferenceCoordinatingCommittee),Prof.Dr.
Ramasamy (Deputy Chief Minister II), Chong Eng (State Exco member and Chair of the Penang
Women’s Development Corporation) and Roberta Clarke (Regional Director, UN Women Regional
OfficeforAsiaandthePacific).ThepermissionwasgrantedbyPWDCwhoprovidedthephoto.Moreon
thisbookisat:http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/SpringerBriefs_ESDP_22.htm
Copyediting:PDDr.HansGünterBrauch,AFES-PRESSe.V.,Mosbach,Germany
LanguageEditing:Ms.VeenaN.,Bangkok,Thailand
Printedonacid-freepaper
SpringerInternationalPublishingAGSwitzerlandispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia
(www.springer.com)
Participantsfrom16countriesallovertheworldconvergedinPenangfortheGRB
Conference.ThephotowasprovidedbyPWDCwhograntedpermissiontoinclude
it here
Conferencedelegates.The photowas providedbyPWDC who grantedpermission
to include it in this volume
Foreword
This important and timely book addresses the critical issue of citizen participation
throughaconversationbetweenthoseengagedinparticipatorybudgeting(PB)and
gender responsive budgeting (GRB) approaches. The book is rich in case studies
including examples from Indonesia, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Austria, Philippines
andGermany.Theauthors,genderspecialists,policymakersandacademics,engage
with debates surrounding the meaning of citizen participation, its practices and
constraints and draw out lessons for GRB.
Governmentbudgetsreflecttheprioritiesofthosewhogettoinfluencespending
and revenue-raising decisions. GRB and PB strategies offer different means of
challenging traditional, and often invisible, power relationships and budgetary
outcomes. Fiscal democratization through inclusive participation in budgetary
debates and decision-making processes is essential if governments are to be
accountable for their budgetary priorities. It also has the capacity to reveal the
differential impacts on different groups of citizens. GRB and PB each emerged in
the 1980s as strategies emphasizing fiscal democracy but have largely evolved
separately with little overlap or sharing of lessons.
GRB recognizes that policies and their budgets often impact differently on
women andmen insystematic ways.GRBstrategies respond tothelack ofgender
neutrality of budgets with analyses of the gender impacts of government spending
and revenue raising. They also aim to promote actions to change policies and
budget priorities in line with women’s empowerment and gender equality. Framed
in this way GRB requires the participation of different groups of women and men,
particularly those poorly represented or marginalized. The book confronts the
reality that women’s participation can be overlooked in principle or be weak in
practice. Sometimes an expertise/technical approach to GRB has been conceptu-
alized as a rival to a participatory/democratizing approach. One lesson from the
early GRB initiatives of Australia, Philippines, South Africa and the UK was that
thetwoapproacheswerebestunderstoodasrelatedandintertwined.Theutilization
and demonstration of technical expertise had an important role in the politics of
facilitating women’s participation and participation strategies benefited from
vii
viii Foreword
advocacy based on expert analyses. In practice this balance has not been easy to
achieve and broad participation has often been the casualty.
TheeconomicandinstitutionalcontextinwhichGRBoperateshasbeencritical
in influencing the spaces for women’s participation. For example, the Australian
initiative was implemented under a reformist Labour government in the context of
an expansionary Keynesian macroeconomic policy framework and a strong
women’s policy office within government. The women working in the specialized
women’s policy unit (called femocrats) were networked with the women’s move-
mentthatincludedanactivevoiceforwomentradeunionists.Feministresearchers
also participated in developing concepts and tools for gender-based analyses.
However, by the early 1990s the macroeconomic policy framework had become
neoliberal in its orientation and anti-inflation, debt reduction, privatization and
self-provisionpolicieswereadopted.Inthiscontext,manyoftheeffortsoftheGRB
participants were restricted to resisting cuts in services and changes to the
tax-transfer system that would adversely impact on women. When a coalition
(conservative) federal government took office in the mid 1990s, the neoliberal
policy framework sharpened with cuts in welfare spending and a shift in the tax-
ation system to indirect consumption taxation. The funding of the women’s policy
coordinatingofficewasslashedbynearlyhalf.Thusakeygenderpolicyinstitution
fundamentaltotheAustralianGRBinitiativewasseverelyundermined.Also,under
neoliberalism, activist civil society groups, including many women’s groups, were
marginalized further by being positioned as special interest groups pressuring the
government to allocate scarce resources away from the broader community. In the
followingdecades,theAustralianGRBinitiativecontinuedtoadapttothechanging
economic and institutional contexts under different governments which in turn
re-shaped the space for women’s participation.
This book’s focus on citizen participation in budgeting is highly relevant in
today’s climate of austerity policies implemented in response to the 2008 global
financialandeconomiccrisis.Thefinancialandeconomiccrisishasresultedinthe
private debt of the banks and other financial institutions being transferred to gov-
ernments. This once again has reminded us of the power of the finance sector and
thepotentiallimitation ofstates to act intheinterestsofless powerfulgroups. The
budgetary responses of government have been to reduce services and benefits and
cut public sector employment. The potential for women, particularly poor women,
to bear a greater burden of these budgetary policies is high given their relatively
greaterdependenceon governmentservices, benefitsand jobs. Furthermore, asthe
unpaid work of women is the alternative to family support services provided by
governments, women’s time burdens are likely to increase. The context of the
economic and financial crisis and austerity policies pose many challenges for both
GRB and PB including the likelihood offewer resources inside and outside gov-
ernmenttoundertakeanalysesofexpendituresandrevenues.Italsoemphasizesthe
need for strong political mobilization to contest austerity policies for their gender,
class and other biases and to bring about alternatives. GRB initiatives with strong
participatory features are better placed to meet these challenges and contribute to
institutional changes that foster gender equality.
Foreword ix
The book offers the promise of a new direction for entwining women’s and
men’s participation by building a broad-based expertise in budget analysis and
good financial governance. The exemplar is the Penang Gender and Participatory
Budgeting (GRPB) pilot project (2012–2014) which has been implemented at two
localgovernments.Asonewhowasinvolvedintheearlystagesofestablishingthis
pilot project, I am impressed with its progress over the last three years. The pilot
emergedoutofnewpoliticalcontextwiththeelectionoftheprogressivethreeparty
coalition, called the People’s Alliance. A new women’s agency within the Penang
state government was established and a partnership developed between academia,
women’s NGOs and the state government. The pilot followed a scoping exercise
that recommended a model that would incorporate appropriate structures and pro-
cesses for ensuring participation, capacity building, high level commitment and
producebudgetaryoutcomesthatmetwomen’sandmen’sneeds.Astheprojecthas
unfolded, it demonstrated that ordinary women’s and men’s participation on bud-
getary matters that impact on their everyday lives can be a powerful force for
change.
December 2014 Rhonda Sharp
University of South Australia
Hawke Research Institute
Preface
Since 2004 there have been several Treasury call circulars from the Ministry of
Finance,Malaysia,obliginggovernmentagenciesatalllevelstoimplementgender
responsive budgeting (GRB). Penang is the first and only state in Malaysia to
respond to this important call. While the idea to implement GRB was mooted in
2010,itwasonlyin2012thataGRBpilot,withaparticipatoryfocus,wasinitiated
by the newly established Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC),
astate-linked women’sagency.Thisprojectwasimplementedinsmartpartnership
withthetwolocalcouncils,thePenangIslandMunicipalCouncil1andtheSeberang
JayaMunicipalCouncil.Threeyearsdowntheroad,PWDCwaskeentoshareand
learnfromtheexperiencesofothercountries,particularlyonsynergizingGRBand
participatory budgeting(PB)—twoapproacheswhichhaveexisted since the1980s
and have been practised all over the world. PWDC has since renamed this as a
gender responsive and participatory project (GRPB).
Subsequently, a conference was organized in Penang, Malaysia during 24–25
February 2014. This Asian Regional Conference entitled ‘Gender Responsive
Budgeting Narratives: Transforming Institutions, Empowering Communities’ was
organized by PWDC in collaboration with the Penang State Government, the
Penang Island Municipal Council, the Seberang Perai Municipal Council and
United Nations Women (UN Women).
The conference brought together GRB and PB practitioners and experts within
the Asian region and beyond to share and review experiences, reflect on successes
and challenges and chart future paths that can best support the potential of both
GRB and PB to strengthen each other in the budgeting process. For GRB, the
question was the effectiveness of the approach in transforming institutions and to
what extent it is moving processes to become more participatory. For PB, it was
about the importance of integrating gender concerns into their work. As noted by
Roberta Clarke,theRegional Directorof theUNWomenRegional Office for Asia
and thePacific inher opening address, what would be therole of GRB inopening
1NowPenangIslandCityCouncil.
xi