Abstract
Gender-responsive budgeting is an application of gender mainstreaming in all phases of the budgetary cycle, in the allocation of economic and financial resources in gender equal or unequal ways and in decision-making processes. It is a gender-specific accountability document produced by governments from all regions of the world to show what their programs and budgets are achieving with respect to gender equality, to the empowerment of women, and to women’s rights. Integrating a gender budgeting methodology into the ordinary budgetary processes allows governments to understand better the different effects that policies and actions, revenue and expenditure, can have on women and men. Moreover, the gender budget report plays a particularly important role in the improvement of governance: it is a tool available to public administration for self-evaluation and therefore defines increasingly effective and fair administration methods. Through a qualitative approach, this study investigates the most significant gender budgeting initiatives implemented by Italian regions, provinces, and municipalities in order to know which approaches and methodologies in the gender budgeting processes they have adopted internally or promoted on their territories. Particularly, this study analyses 27 gender budgets carried out in 4 Italian regions, 6 provinces, 1 union of municipalities, and 16 municipalities. Currently, available evidence suggests the need to public authorities to go further than the sporadic implementation of gender budgeting, systematizing a gender-based analysis, and a gender equality-oriented evaluation with regard to the distribution of resources and the explanation of budgets.
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Notes
- 1.
The Gender Equality Index (GEI) is a comprehensive measure of gender gaps: it considers the context and different levels of achievement of Member States within a range of relevant policy areas: work, money, knowledge, time, power, and health. It highlights the different outcomes of EU and national policies for women and men and supports the development and implementation of evidence-based policymaking in the area of gender equality.
- 2.
The full version of the report to Parliament on the 2017 gender budget is available on the State’s General Accounting Department website (http://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/Attivit%2D%2Di/Rendiconto/Bilancio-di-genere/). It is completed by an appendix on legislation (Appendix I) reviewing the provisions for the reduction of gender inequalities enacted in Italy; by an appendix with each administration’s replies to questionnaires on personnel and sectoral policies in gender perspective (Appendix II); and by a statistical appendix (Appendix III) available in a computer-processable format and containing indicators for monitoring gender gaps. Some highlights of the results are also disseminated through the Open budget App (http://bilancioaperto.mef.gov.it/landing.html)
- 3.
According to the Article 38-septies of Law No. 196 of 2009, introduced by Article 9 of the Legislative Decree of 12 May 2016, n. 90 relative to the completion of the budget reform – subsequently amended by the law 4 August 2016 n. 163 – the experimentation concerns, on the one hand, the accounting reclassification of the expenses of the State budget and, on the other, the identification of statistical indicators to monitor the actions undertaken to influence gender inequalities and their association with the structures of the budget, as well as an analysis of the impact on the kind of the main fiscal policy measures. The individual Responsibility Centers of Central State Administrations, including their peripheral branches, and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, as active subjects of budget policies, are called to contribute to the reclassification of expenses and to communicate the actions taken and/or the specific guidelines issued to influence the reduction of gender inequalities. The Circular letter of 5 July 2017, no. 25 (Gender balance sheet; Guidelines and start of experimentation related to the 2016 General State Report) provides the Guidelines for reclassifying expenses and the schemes to be adopted to transmit information on the activity carried out, as well as the schedule of the obligations. Following the first pilot on the 2016 State final accounts, it was deemed appropriate to replicate the activities also for reference year 2017 in order to allow for the examination of a more complete set of indicators on gender gaps in areas fundamental to the community and to carry out a more precise census of the relevant expenditures and of the activities carried out by each administration in a gender perspective.
- 4.
Although decreasing, the gender gap continues to penalize women in the labor market. The female employment rate in Italy is 48.9% against the 62.5% EU average; part-time and low-pay work characterize and contribute to the gender pay gap; women focus on employee work and are concentrated in the services sectors, such as trade, health, and education.
- 5.
Women in all age groups are at greater risk of poverty than men, and the social transfers do not affect much the existing disparities. Older and single women with dependent children are particularly at risk.
- 6.
As a result of the specific gender quota Law (no.120 of 12 July 2011), a greater number of women are members of listed company boards, but there are still few with executive positions. At the end of 2017, the post of managing director was entrusted to only 18 women (7.9% of all listed companies).
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Pastore, P., Tommaso, S. (2020). Gender-Responsive Budgeting Processes in the Italian Regional and Local Governments. In: Paoloni, P., Lombardi, R. (eds) Gender Studies, Entrepreneurship and Human Capital. IPAZIA 2019. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46874-3_13
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