October 2008

The newest addition to the family of World Bank Group blogs, Crisis Talk, "aims to provide the latest information on the unfolding financial crisis, both on specific countries and sectors, as well as on the global crisis response. The blog will also feature opinions on what solutions may be possible, what shape the financial sector may take in the future, and how the crisis affects the real economy."

Welcome to the blogosphere!

From Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

Gender Budgeting - Why and How (cont.)

Stotsky (2006) presents two hypothetical examples of gender analysis in a national budget that explicitly addresses the gender dimension of the policy objective, the means by which it will be executed, the resources needed and the indicators necessary to identify performance. This approach goes beyond the general assumption that expanding primary education, for example, will be distributed equally across the population. It represents a gender mainstreaming approach and is a gender responsive budget, responding to the inequalities that exist in primary education for girls and outlining the potential of reducing these inequalities in improving earning power for girls because of better education and other social benefits. 

Hypothetical examples of gender analysis in a national budget

Source:   Stotsky (2006).

As usual on Fridays, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

Gender Budgeting – why and how

As noted last week, gender mainstreaming represents the catalyst for gender budgeting going beyond programs designed to specifically target women. Elson (2002) remarked that government budgets are not gender neutral but in fact gender blind, having different effects on women and men. A gender-responsive budget according to Elson  “does not aim to produce a separate budget for women. Instead it aims to analyze any form of public expenditure, identifying implications and impacts for women and girls as compared to men and boys. The key question is: what impact does this fiscal measure have on gender equality? Does it reduce gender inequality; increase it; or leave it unchanged?”.   

John Williamson, who coined the term Washington Consensus, revisits it at the Growth Blog.

Dani Rodrik comments in his blog.

As usual on Fridays, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

Summary Measures of Gender Inequalities

Measures of inequality in key economic, social and political indicators suggest that gender inequality continues, although inequality in education is narrowing (Stotsky, 2006). The table below examines average values of education and health indicators for three country groupings classified by high, medium or low levels of human development based on per capita income.

Gender Inequalities in Education and Health Status, 2001/02

Source: Stotsky (2006)

Expressing gender inequality as a ratio of females to males for the relevant variables, we note that educational inequalities exist, in particular for low human development countries in primary enrollment (0.86) and especially in secondary enrollment (0.73).  Gender parity in education exists for the high and medium human development countries in both primary and secondary. Indeed in the latter, girls outnumber boys at least for the year in question.

The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) has started a new blog. A nice addition to the blogosphere. Welcome!

(Via Owen)

This week the "Fridays Academy" arrives on a Saturday. Starting today and during a few weeks we will be looking at Gender Budgeting. As usual, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

Introduction

Targeting government budgeting to address gender equality has a relatively recent history and forms part of the general consensus that advocates the allocation of government funds to the direct and/or indirect support of policy areas such as environment and poverty for example.  The new emphasis on government budgeting for gender equality is more correctly defined as ‘Gender Mainstreaming’.