Parliamentary Assembly Assembl�e parlementaire

Gender budgeting

Doc. 10031
13 January 2004

Motion for a recommendation
presented by Mrs Curdov� and others

This motion has not been discussed in the Assembly and commits only the members who have signed it

1.       The Assembly reiterates the call of the Beijing Platform of Action on governments and other players to promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes, so that before decisions are taken an analysis is made of their effects on women and men respectively.

2.       The Assembly welcomes the work of the Steering Committee for Equality between Women and Men of the Council of Europe on gender budgeting in Council of Europe member states.

3.       The Assembly endorses the definition of gender budgeting proposed by the Council of Europe Informal Group of experts on gender budgeting, according to which, it is an application of gender mainstreaming to the budgetary process. It means a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality.

4.       The Assembly stresses that governments are the core actors in promoting gender budgeting, which depends on the allocation of human and financial resources for co-ordination and capacity-building, and the organisation and carrying out of the necessary analyses.

5.       Unfortunately, only very few Council of Europe member states have so far undertaken initiatives in this field. The main obstacles encountered in implementing gender budgeting appear to be the lack of gender-disaggregated statistics, as well as a certain lack of political will.

6.       Therefore, the Assembly emphasises that active commitment at the highest political and administrative level is crucial for the implementation of a successful gender budgeting policy and calls on governments and parliaments of the member states of the Council of Europe to:

• introduce a gender perspective into the budget process at every level - European, national, regional and local;

• promote awareness-raising  among decision-makers at all levels on the importance of the implementation of gender-budgeting policies, providing them with detailed information and guidelines on the action to be taken to implement and assess gender-budgeting strategies;

• provide the appropriate human and financial resources for the necessary analysis, co-ordination and capacity-building in gender-budgeting;

• collect gender-disaggregated data as a necessary basis for a gendered assessment of the impact of policies in general.

7.       The Assembly recommends to the Committee of Ministers to intensify its work on gender budgeting, and to promote the rapid implementation of gender budgeting policies across all 45 member states of the Council of Europe.

Signed ^[1]:
Curdov�, Czech Republic, SOC
Aguiar, Portugal, EPP/CD
Bilgehan, Turkey, SOC
Cliveti, Romania, SOC
Foulkes, United Kingdom, SOC
Gaburro, Italy, EPP/CD
H�gg, Sweden, SOC
L�pez Gonz�lez, Spain, SOC
Mikutiene, Lithuania, LDR
Mooney, Ireland, LDR
Zapfl-Helbling, Switzerland, EPP/CD