Carry out reforms to eliminate gender discrimination
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Nana Oye Lithur has called on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to engage with the Heads of State and Government about conducting gender analysis of national budgets.
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Contributing to a high-level round-table discussion on “Investing in gender equality and the empowerment of women”, at the 59th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, in New York, Nana Oye said gender analysis of national budgets should be regular and it should be a deliberate strategy.
The discussion was moderated by Amina Mohamed, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning and chaired by Marina Kaljurand, Deputy Foreign Minister of Estonia.
To facilitate the process, she said African governments need to generate data to depict the low budget allocations and the negative impact and share the data.
Best practice
Offering Ghana’s example as a best practice, the minister, who is leading Ghana’s delegation to the UN session, said the country had adopted gender budgeting and this had helped to increase budget allocation, although it still remains low comparatively.
The Gender Ministry, she said was engaging strategically with the finance and planning sector by strengthening their capacity to understand the issues and appreciate the positive dividend of increasing resources in gender equality and empowerment of women.
In addition, Nana Oye said, to address the gaps in donor support and strengthen global partnership the Gender ministry has put together the Gender Empowerment Sector Working Group co-chaired by the minster and a development partner which is working to ensure investment in gender equity.
Furthermore, partnership with Brazil through South-South cooperation with Brazil has resulted in support for social protection.
The minister further indicated that Ghana’s Shared Growth and Development Agenda had also provided opportunities to introduce programmes that improve the incomes of women, such as the LEAP.
Opening the discussion, Ms. Kaljurand noted that investments should be increased for the advancement of gender equality, stressing that “Gender responsive budgeting should be institutionalized across policies and sectors.”
“We have a year of action in 2015,” said Ms. Mohamed in her introductory remarks, noting that the run-up to the September adoption of a new development agenda offered a timely opportunity for discussing investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Governments, she stressed, must increase their capacity to raise revenues for social protections and decent work and should also carry out reforms to eliminate gender discrimination, especially in tax policies, and set up accountability mechanisms to increase transparency. “We need to know where the money goes and how it is spent,” she concluded
Discussions
In the ensuing discussion, ministers and senior officials from around the world outlined national policies, legislation and programmes designed to improve financing for gender equality.
The representative of Viet Nam said 80 per cent of the $50 million spent on its national strategy and programme was financed from the State budget, with the remainder from international organizations and a community fund. Since 2009, $13.8 million in official development assistance (ODA) had been spent on gender equality.
Along similar lines, the representative of Nigeria described a pilot programme to support disadvantaged women and girls, carried out by the ministries of agriculture, communications, technology, health, and water resources and works.
Others who contributed to the discussions were ministers and senior officials of Thailand, Angola, Sudan, Iran, Nicaragua, Senegal, Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Indonesia, Philippines, Fiji, Palau, Mongolia, South Africa, Spain and Uruguay.