Implementing gender budgeting in Scotland and Spain: a comparative feminist analysis

Gender Budget Analysis (GBA) is rooted in feminist economics analysis and assertions of gender-blind deficiencies in prevailing macroeconomic models. Initiated in the 1980s in Australia, GBA (also known as Gender Responsive Budgeting) gained momentum in the 1990s across countries in Africa and Latin America. The concept emerged in Europe in the late 1990s as an additional tool for advancing gender equality, following its inclusion in the Beijing Platforms for Action (PfAs) in 1995, which proposed gender responsive budgeting as an approach within gender mainstreaming and for embedding gender analysis in the policy process. In brief, GBA aims to advance equality between women and men by challenging the distribution of public resources and turning gender equality policy statements into economic commitments expressed in government budgets (Sharp 2002). The impetus of the Beijing PfAs promoted the concept as a transformational and institutionally focused approach to advancing gender equality policy. Evidence of emerging practice, including from UNIFEM (UN Women) and the Commonwealth Secretariat, and dissemination through feminist epistemic and civil society networks, helped the concept to travel, and ultimately led to its nominal level of adoption by the institutions of the European Union (EU) by the early 2000s.