Mainstreaming – Examples of Best Practice

Gender mainstreaming in the
decision-making process
If you are mainstreaming the decision-making process
up to the passing of the budget, you can analyse:
1) How is the gender-division among participants in
the decision-making process? Is there an equal
division among men and women? And how is
responsibility shared?
2) Are there concrete political objectives for equality
on the specific budget area?
3) What kind of data is the decision taken on the basis
of? Are enough gender-divided statistics available?
Is there material available about gendered consequences
of the budget?
4) What resources (time, money and manpower) are
set aside to analyse the gendered consequences of
the budget?
Mainstreaming the budget
Professor Diane Elson from the University of Essex has
worked with mainstreaming the budgets of governments,
and has set up a frame of analysis, in an
attempt to get around all parts of the budget-process.
Gendered budget analysis focuses on four central
levels of the budget-process:
22 • Gender Mainstreaming in budgeting
Input
How much money is put aside for a specific area? Is it
equally divided between men and women?
Activities
Which governmental or municipal services are planned?
Is this service sought-after by both men and
women, or is it a service mainly used by one sex only?
Output
What actual consequences do the offered services
have in practice? Is the gender division among users
of government services as expected?
Effects: What broader social and political consequences
did the budget have? Did it have the intended
effect, and was the effect desirable for both men and
women?
This frame of analysis makes it possible to question all
levels of the budget-process.
The following example is from the annual budget
2000 of the City of Gothenburg. The mainstreaming
process in Gothenburg does not follow the above list,
but Gothenburg is a fine example of how the process
can be tackled. And it shows that the method has to
be adjusted to the concrete project.