Gender budgeting, building public budgets from a gender perspective

The committee adopted the own-initiative report by Fiorella GHILARDOTTI (PES, I) on gender budgeting - building public budgets from a gender perspective. It began by looking at the definition, aims and scope of gender budgeting, saying that the aim was not to produce separate budgets for men and women but rather to influence public budgets to ensure that women's priorities and needs are taken into account on an equal basis to those of men. It added that, by defining and implementing budgetary policies, public authorities take specific political decisions affecting society and the economy. MEPs also stressed that gender budget strategies must be implemented in a broader macro-economic context which bolsters the development of human resources and human capital, in line with the objectives set at the Lisbon Summit. As regards the tools and methods of gender budgeting, the report identified a number of requirements for building a public budget from a gender perspective, such as: identifying how different citizens benefit from public expenditure and contribute to public revenue; evaluating the different impact on women and men of budgetary policies and redistribution of resources in terms of money, services, time and work of social and family care; developing a bottom-up budgetary process and involving all citizens and relevant organisations with the aim of identifying specific needs and appropriate policies, and ensuring that gender analyses and impact are thoroughly taken into consideration in all phases of the budgetary process, including project definition, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The committee also pointed to the need for interministerial coordination linking ministries for the budget, economic affairs and finance with the ministry and/or departments responsible for equal opportunities. The report called on the Commission, the Member States, and local and regional governments to carry out gender budgeting and stressed that the gender budgeting strategy should become a "parliamentarised procedure" within the European Parliament and national, regional and local parliaments, with particular reference to the countries soon to join the EU. The committee urged the European Parliament to implement gender budgeting in the process of EU budget definition in order to develop a gender-responsive budgetary policy in the EU. Finally, the report called on the Commission to produce and distribute extensively a brochure explaining instruments and methods for incorporating gender budgeting, to initiate a wide-ranging information campaign, to produce within two years a communication on gender budgeting and to draw up indicators or benchmarks in order to provide an overview of the process and shape a strategy for action for the EU and the Member States. �