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excluded groups (b) examining the gender responsiveness of the policies,
programs/projects (c) assessing budget alloca� ons, (d) iden� fying the
gaps, es� ma� ng expenditure required to bridge gaps and realloca� ng
the budget (e) tracking actual spending and how decisions are made, and
fi nally (e) assessing gender disaggregated outcomes and impacts (benefi t
sharing, empowerment). In Nepal the GRB exercise has not systema� cally
followed these steps and it is done on ad hoc basis. To be eff ec� ve the GRB
system needs to encompass the complete budget cycle and include detailed
assessments of each program against the following criteria:
Transforma� ve: Policies and programs must address the root causes
of gender subordina� on and not just the symptoms. For example, many of
Nepal’s development interven� ons for women's equality were not eff ec� ve
because they did not address structural issues such as unequal inheritance
rights, gender based violence, caste/ethnic discrimina� on, etc. The GRB
must take a gender approach to development and improve women’s status
or bargaining power in gender rela� ons by addressing division of work,
resources inequality and power rela� ons.
Adequacy: Allocated resources must be assessed to determine their
adequacy for achieving not just formal but substan� ve equality. For example,
it is fairly inexpensive to establish formal legal equality, but women need
resources to access the legal services, and without that there can be no
substan� ve equality.
Non-discriminatory: Programs can be non-discriminatory only when
they recognize that women and historically excluded other groups face
formal and informal barriers to accessing publicly provisioned services, and
make provisions to erase those barriers.
Monitoring system: The GRB must have a transparent, par� cipatory
and responsive monitoring mechanism with eff ec� ve indicators to track the
expenditure, measure its outputs and outcomes and give feedback to the
system.
Nepal's GRB encompasses both benefi t and empowerment indicators
but the methodology is not systema� c: it is essen� ally a post-alloca� on
classifi ca� on at the ministry level rather than a pre-alloca� on exercise. Its
focus has been on inputs and project targets rather than on measuring
results. The methodology also needs to link GRB indicators for each sector
with the ins� tu� onal outputs and indicators of that sector, leaving out
those that are irrelevant and adding those that are relevant to the gender
sensi� vity of ins� tu� onal outputs.
Another big challenge in making the GRB opera� onal is training and
capacity building of the MWSCW and the Gender Focal Points (GFP)/units
in other ministries as well as all planning and budge� ng units in government
and local self-governance bodies. This is even more important in the context
of federalism and decentraliza� on as it can aff ect planning, budge� ng and
monitoring. Similarly, capacity building eff orts are needed to enable the
members of parliament and sister organiza� ons of the poli� cal par� es, and
non-government stakeholders on the GRB process.
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Changing paradigms of aid eff ec� veness in Nepal