Feminisation of Gender Budgeting: An Uphill Task for Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper analyses gender budgeting initiatives in Zimbabwe from 2008 when the Gender Budget Circular Call mandating all ministries to mainstream gender in their programmes and budgets came into effect. In order to analyse national budgets and budgeting process in Zimbabwe, the research used a qualitative methodology, which is, specifically, documentary research. Special attention was placed on critical sectors, such as health, agriculture, women’s affairs, water and sanitation, and education where disparity between men and women is apparent. The paper concludes that budgetary allocations for women programmes are inadequate, hence the need to feminise gender budgeting process in order to yield better results. However, feminisation of the gender budgeting process is not an easy task for Zimbabwe due to lack of up-to-date gender disaggregated data, lack of political will, and economic challenges that are limiting the fiscal space, among others. There is, however, an opportunity to draw lessons from other developing countries such as South Africa, Mexico, and Namibia as discussed in this study.

Gender budgeting in emerging economies–a systematic literature review and research agenda

“…The disadvantages of secondary data collection, for example, that researchers have to use aggregated statistics, rather than working with up-to-date data that are already disaggregated by gender, are acknowledged as limitations by some of the authors (e.g. Edralin, 2011;Manyeruke and Hamauswa, 2013). Country focus.…”

“…Here, topics such as data availability (e.g. Manyeruke and Hamauswa, 2013) and analytical capacity (e.g. Botlhale, 2011; Avdagi c and Huji c, 2012) are discussed.…”

“…The authors promote the use of gender-disaggregated data to achieve more detailed results in an expenditure incidence analysis while acknowledging political, cultural and technical hurdles that may limit its use. This call for gender-disaggregated data is echoed by several other researchers (Edralin, 2011;Manyeruke and Hamauswa, 2013). Analysts collecting such gender-disaggregated data may face technical or political hurdles, but can ultimately provide a more detailed analysis of the state of the art on gender budgeting and its achievements.…”

“…Avdagi c and Huji c, 2012; Chakraborty, . Numerous studies stress the importance of multistakeholder engagement and policy support for successfully implementing gender budgeting and raise the concern that gender budgeting cannot be effective if crucial support, for example, from the side of politics and policy, is missing (Adeyeye and Akinbami, 2010;Dey and Dutta, 2014;Manyeruke and Hamauswa, 2013;Marks Rubin, 2009;Spehar, 2018). Zakirova (2014) analyses gender budgeting in one of the Russian republics and finds that public administration often lacks the capacity to link civil society and governmental stakeholders, therefore hindering the implementation of participatory gender budgeting.…”

Sub-Saharan Africa: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts

“…The implementation of gender budgeting has been hampered by Zimbabwe's macroeconomic dislocations and budget problems in the past decade. Rural women and girls have been especially hard hit by the scaling back of many public services, including electricity supply (Manyeruke and Hamausw, 2013). In 2012 only 6 out of the 38 vote appropriations in the national budget included a line item under "Programmes for gender mainstreaming" (SADC, 2014).…”