United Nations

As women's groups and political activists intensify their global campaign for gender empowerment, there is a growing trend towards "gender budgeting" both among developed and developing nations.

Rawwida Baksh, team leader of Women's Rights and Citizenship at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada, told IPS the concept of "gender-responsive budgeting" has been in currency since the mid-1980s.

The Australian government was the first to introduce gender budgeting in 1984, followed by Canada in 1993 and South Africa in 1994. Since then, some 50 countries worldwide have adopted some form of gender-responsive budgeting, she said.

According to some estimates, the figure may be over 60 to 70 countries which have specifically earmarked gender-related funds in their respective national budgets.

The ICT arena is characterized by the strategic control exercised by powerful corporations and nations - monopolies built upon the intellectual property regime, increasing surveillance of the Interned and an undermining of its democratic substance, and exploitation of the powerless by capitalist imperialism, sexism and racism.  Within the ICT arena women have relatively little ownership of and influence on the decision-making processes being underrepresented in the private sector and government bodies which control this arena.

Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is budgeting responsive budgeting (GRB) is budgeting that integrates a gender perspective and tracks how budgets respond to gender equality and women's rights requirements. This entails examining not only actual allocations and revenue raising measures but also budgeting systems, budgeting processes and looking at the roles of the various actors throughout the process. It also entails investing in making available mechanisms, guidelines, data and indicators that enable gender equality advocates to track progress, benefit incidence and show how supposedly gender neutral budgets impact women.