Assessing the role of gender-related aspects in public budgeting debates: A view of the central level in Germany
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523231156538 |
| Author | Sarah Mueller,Iris Saliterer,Sanja Korac |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Assessing the role of
gender-related aspects in
public budgeting debates:
A view of the centrallevel
in Germany
Sarah Mueller
University of Freiburg, Germany
University of Speyer, Germany
Iris Saliterer
University of Freiburg, Germany
Sanja Korac
University of Speyer, Germany
Abstract
The paper explores how members of parliament (MPs) address gender-related aspects in
the budgeting process at the central level in Germany, a country that pursues gender
equality as a global objective but has not implemented gender budgeting (GB) (yet).
Nevertheless, from a budgeting perspective the German context is interesting, as parlia-
ment has unrestricted powers to amend the budget draft. The study follows approaches
in performance management literature streams that have explored different types of
performance information use. Building on a qualitative analysis of parliamentary budget
debates, our results show that gender-related aspects matter in budgeting even when
GB is not implemented. However, resources are less often referenced than programmes
and policies in the budget debates. We find that MPs address gender-related aspects in a
differentiated way (reflected in four types of performance information use), and that this
is affected by user characteristics: the MPs’gender, their party affiliation, committee
membership and in some aspects, their age. While it may not come as a surprise that
Corresponding author:
Sarah Mueller Postfach 14 09
67324 Speyer, Germany
Email: smueller@uni-speyer.de
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 167–184
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523231156538
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
female MPs act as advocates for gender-related aspects, it is interesting that female MPs
are more likely to reference resources when addressing gender-related aspects than
male MPs. Further, our analysis of types of performance information use shows that a
party’s position as either a part of a governing coalition or opposition, as well as
party lines across the opposition, affect the way in which gender-related aspects are
addressed: exerting supportive use types (i.e.,legitimizing, highlighting) and rather chal-
lenging use types (i.e., de-legitimizing, deflecting).
Points for practitioners
Even in a context where gender budgeting is not implemented, members of parliament
(MPs) reference gender equality in budget debates.
The frequency and the way in which gender-related aspects arereferenced mirrors MPs’
stance towards gender equality (rather supportive/rather challenging).
Female MPs are more likely than male MPs to draw attention to the allocation of
resources for gender-related issues.
More female MPs in parliament may strengthen advocacy for gender-related aspects, par-
ticularly if budget documents do not contain gender-related performance goals.
Keywords
gender budgeting, budget, Germany, central level, performance information, parliament
Introduction
Since the early 2000s, multi-faceted approaches of performance budgeting have been
adopted by governments worldwide and have therefore also played a major role in
research on budgeting and accounting (Moynihan and Beazley, 2016). More
broadly, performance budgeting refers to “the systematic use of performance infor-
mation to inform budget decisions”(OECD, 2019a). As such, it changes the logic
and internal processes in budgeting, building on wider performance-measurement
systems that entail non-financial goals and indicators. To the public, these
performance-related aspects mainly become visible in publicly available budget
documents or in budget debates that address policy-related goals and objectives or
provide a platform for discussions about the latter. This is particularly observable
in countries with an outcome-oriented approach to policy-making and budgeting
(Downes et al., 2018; Saliterer et al., 2019).
A similar logic applies to gender budgeting (GB), an outcome-oriented concept for
implementing measures towards gender equality (see Downes and Nicol, 2019) that
introduces gender-related perspectives into the budgetary process (Budlender et al.,
2002; Klatzer et al., 2018) to achieve gender equality. GB scholars argue that the alloca-
tion of resources, and therefore the budget, has different impacts on women and men.
Thus, despite the budget being usually described as “gender-neutral”, it should rather
be described as “gender-blind”(Budlender and Hewitt, 2003; Elson, 2002).
168 International Review of Administrative Sciences 90(1)
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