WOMEN COUNT AUSTRALIA: Gender-responsive budgeting was pioneered by Australian governments in the mid-1980s. It has gained international momentum as an approach for ensuring that policies and budgets are aligned with gender equality commitments. Gender-responsive budgeting involves an analysis of the impact of the budget on gender equality and a process of changing budgetary decision-making and priorities.
This Australian casebook is inspired by the UK Women’s Budget Group resource, Women count: A casebook for gender-responsive budgeting groups, supported by the Open Society Foundations. The UK Women’s Budget Group gave their permission to use Women count to produce our Australian edition.
This casebook aims to:
- promote the benefits of gender-responsive budgeting to governments, civil society and other policy-makers
- illustrate the potential of gender analysis of economic policies to show impacts on gender gaps and inequalities
- highlight examples of engaging with the budgetary processes in the pursuit of policy and funding changes
- examine the unique role of Australian gender or women’s budget statements in gender-responsive budgeting
- build the gender-responsive budgeting capacity of government, women’s organisations and other civil society groups.
Authored By Monica Costa and Rhonda Sharp, Contributions from Siobhan Austen