Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB)
as a Policy Tool for Women’s
Advancement
Esther Eghobamien
Head of Gender Section & Interim Director
Social Transformation Programmes
Division
Commonwealth
Secretariat
Overview
 Who we are (Commonwealth, STPD Gender
Section)
 Background to GRB work and lessons learned
 Evolving to Gender Responsive Investments
(GRI) work
 Key Lessons and Findings
 Conclusion
Social Transformation Programmes Division
Contributes to the Secretariat’s
agenda on Human
Development by working with governments and key
stakeholders to address issues and challenges in
Education, Health and Gender.
Global Policy Framework
 global commitments in MDGs, BPfA, PoA, UNSCR
1325, CEDAW
Approach:
 Advocacy:
Knowledge creation and Policy dialogue
 Brokering: Technical Assistance, Capacity Building
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Work Programme: Four Critical CW PoA Action
Areas
& Mandates
The Commonwealth Plan of Action for
Gender Equality 2005–2015 (PoA)
provides an overarching mandate for
gender equality. The Secretariat’s
Gender Section coordinates the four PoA
critical areas of concern

Gender, Democracy Peace and Conflict
 Gender, human rights and law
 Gender, poverty eradication and
economic empowerment
 Gender and HIV/AIDS
Commonwealth Mandates
 CHOGM
 Ministerial
.
Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB)
 Definition
GRB is a budgeting process/tool that
incorporates a gender equality
perspective into the budgeting process
and policies that underpin the
budgetary processes towards
promoting equality between women
and men.
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Background to GRB work
 GRB pioneered in the late 1990s through strategic
engagements with Commonwealth Finance
Ministers.
 By 2005 biannual reporting to Finance Ministers
on progress in implementing GRB among
members was instituted.
 GRB reviewed in 2009
revealed that a third of Commonwealth member countries had
adapted GRB, including South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and
the United Kingdom, to mention a few.
 Modality

Knowledge Creation
 Tools and resources

Capacity strengthening
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Key Lessons over 10-year GRB
Implementation
 The tendency for most GRB work to be
women focused and not utilise a systemwide approach for integrating gender with
budget analysis;
 Efforts often overlooked areas where
men’s needs define the norm;
 A clear absence of accountability to
women at all levels hinders GRB;
 Statutory accountability mechanisms
(parliaments, government machineries,
women’s NGOs) fail to make the
necessary linkages between women’s
empowerment and poverty eradication;
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Key Lessons Cont.
 Promoting women’s leadership is pivotal to achieving
development goals and targets;
 The need to rethink ethics, values and priorities that
shape and drive financial systems and markets;
 The participation of women with capacity in budget
matters has been pivotal, particularly in South Africa,
Uganda and Australia;
 A key role is played in GRB implementation by
women parliamentarians in Uganda and South
Africa;
 Two thirds of countries that have initiated GRBs are
still at the initial stage, i.e. environment building;
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Key Lessons cont.
 The regions in which the greatest progress has been
made are
 South Asia and
 Southern/Eastern
Africa
where the process of mainstreaming gender budgets within
concerned ministries has been initiated.
 GRB require systematic support and follow up for
this to become institutionalised.

The processes in these regions have been quite different;
however, to a large extent the initiatives in South Asia
have been led from within the government, whereas those
in Africa, for example Tanzania, were initially led by CSOs
and then taken over by government;
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Key Lessons cont.
 Countries have chosen between looking at the budget as
a whole and focusing on specific sectors. When the
latter has been the case, the sectors that have figured
prominently have been education, health and social
security;
 Focus: primarily on the expenditure side of the budget,
with work on the revenue side focusing on taxes (both
direct and indirect) and tariffs in a comparatively
preliminary phase;
 Some countries have initiated activity at sub-national
level. There have been regional initiatives in Australia,
South Africa, India and Sri Lanka; and
 Within the Commonwealth there are about 20 countries
for which we have not received any evidence of GRB
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Gender Responsive Investments
“Women account for between 25-40% of SMEs Worldwide
with earning power estimated to reach $18 trillion by 2014...
yet they are unbanked and receive low proportion of credit.”
 Evolved out of pioneering GRB work
 Study on GRB findings showed weak institutional structures
and mechanisms
 Public budget reforms alone inadequate to archive gender
parity
 9WAMM Mandated Secretariat to:
•
•
Research and source investors committed to paying for
the required change
Configure the implications of financing gender focussed
change and innovation
 Enlarged focus to private-sector investment
GRI Key Issues & Research Questions
Issues
 Large percentage of women owned and operated SMEs receive
a small fraction of total capital available
 Financing gap is exacerbated by relative lack of skills, scarce
business linkages and weak technical capabilities
How to:
 Deal with heightened barriers
 Better address asset distribution
 Innovate and change conventional lending practices
 Address the barriers of small and medium business in formation
and achieving success
 Facilitate access to capital and mobilization of start up resources
GRI Research Recommendations
1.
Allocate resources towards the development of a “Commonwealthwide” data gathering initiative focusing on Women SMEs
2.
Address the adverse risk perception of local banks and provide
technical assistance designed to reduce failure rates and increase
profitability.
3.
Innovation in GRI is needed and conventional lending practices must
be revisited and revised ( GRI Handbook).
4.
Members and the Secretariat’s external partners have a key role to
play to increase resource pool and ensure effective use of risk capital
for SMEs for women entrepreneurs.
5.
Need to forge greater linkages between financial services and
business development services (BDS) that target women
Recommendations
6. Raise awareness on the need to grow micro businesses into SME’s
(Savings and Credit Organisations (SACOS) Global Knowledge Sharing
Event - India);
7. Improve Data & Statistics on Women’s Enterprise
8. Members to develop a national strategy for women’s enterprise
development (Commonwealth Business Council partnership)
The Way Forward
A Roadmap for Fostering
GRI
Objective:
An “Enabled” GRI SME Environment
Gender
Awareness
Training
Banks & Funders
Incentivised
Private
Sector
Support
Holistic
Technical
Assistance
Gender Responsive
SME Investment
Conducive
Macro Environment
Coherent
National
Policies
Priority Action
areas
 Develop tools and resources
to enable gender responsive
financial policies and
services.
 Include comprehensive
technical assistance as an
integral part of any financing
model.
 Deepen research on GRI
 Develop and Disseminate a
“Code of Good Practices”
With Respect to GRI
The Proposed
Commonwealth GRI
Good Practice Award
 Tool for inspiring financial
institutions to improve service
delivery
 Award financial institutions and
Ministries or government agencies
Conclusion
 An established need for GRI to address
Gender gaps in area of finance.
 Publication and tools to advance GRI
underway.

GRI Handbook
 Feedback and comments requested from
partners.
 Stakeholders key to publicising the
Commonwealth GRI practice award.
 Open to partnership and collaboration
Parting Question
What role can we play to advance GRI and enable Women be better
Agents of Change?
Thank you