Gender Budgeting

 Gender inequalities persist in all areas of social and economic life. Gender budgeting is an important public governance tool that governments can use to assess how budget decisions impact gender equality. When implemented effectively, gender budgeting helps expose how gender inequalities may have inadvertently become embedded in public policies and the allocation of resources and promotes budget measures that will be effective at closing gender gaps.

Government tax and spending decisions have powerful social, environmental, and economic implications for a country, shaping people’s choices regarding work and economic participation. As part of a broader government effort to make progress on gender equality goals, gender budgeting helps ensure that the budget promotes priorities related to gender equality, such as reducing the gender pay gap and closing gender gaps in the labour market, bringing social and economic gains.

While the uptake of gender budgeting among OECD countries is growing, challenges remain in its implementation. The OECD best practices for gender budgeting highlight the core features common to successful implementation of gender budgeting. These best practices identify elements that contribute to the sustainability of gender budgeting and help governments ensure that the budget helps achieve broader government objectives relating to gender equality.

The best practices draw on gender budgeting practices in Member countries and the OECD’s work with countries in designing and implementing gender budgeting.

>> OECD Best Practices for Gender Budgeting / Highlights document

• OECD work on tax and gender
• OECD work on gender mainstreaming, governance and leadership
• Visit the OECD Gender portal for OECD data and analysis on gender equality

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