Gender budgeting in public financial management: a literature review and research agenda
| Author | Tobias Polzer,Isabella M Nolte,Johann Seiwald |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211031796 |
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Gender budgeting in public
financial management: a
literature review and
research agenda
Tobias Polzer
WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Isabella M Nolte
Harz University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Johann Seiwald
Austrian Parliamentary Budget Office, Austria
Abstract
Gender budgeting calls for including a gender perspective at all levels of governmental
budgetary processes. While the literature on gender budgeting is interdisciplinary and
covers a wide geographical range, it remains fragmented. This study uses a literature
review to examine the current discourse on gender budgeting and to elicit avenues for
future research . Our review shows th at studies fo cus either on emer ging economi es,
suchasIndiaorSouthAfrica,oroncountriesinEurope.Drawingonananalytical
framework, we find that most studies scrutinize the ex ante stages of gender budget-
ing, whereas less is known about the concurrent and ex post stages. Moreover,
because little is known about the outcome and impact of gender budgeting, govern-
ments do not know what instruments function best in different settings. Given their
ex ante focus, most studies on gender budgeting often either remain descriptive or
analyse secondary data. Despite scholars from different disciplines contributing to
the field of gender budgeting, several ‘blank spots’remain, particularly in public sector
accounting.
Corresponding author:
Tobias Polzer, Institute for Organization Studies, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business,
Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Email: tobias.polzer@wu.ac.at
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(2) 450–466
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211031796
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Points for practitioners
•While current gender budgeting projects tend to focus on the ex ante stage of gender
budgeting, future practitioner attention needs to focus on the equally important concur-
rent and ex post stages, which have received less attention thus far.
•An increasing number of governments worldwide are implementing gender budgeting
projects. Governments need to evaluate the outcome and impact of these projects in a
timely fashion, aiming at reducing structural inequalities related to gender.
•Gender budgeting is willingly adopted in times of prosperity and stability or when the
scope of projects appears manageable. To avoid negative impacts on their achieve-
ments, policy makers need to put gender budgeting on the political agenda and insti-
tutionalize it in times of instability and crisis.
Keywords
gender budgeting, gender-responsive budgeting, literature review, research agenda
Introduction
The idea of accounting for gender in public finance in general and in the budgeting
process in particular is not new, and many governments worldwide are implementing
gender budgeting (see, e.g. the recent empirical accounts in edited volumes and special
issues: Ng, 2016; O’Hagan, 2015, 2018). Feminists in Australia started calling for
gender equality in the budgeting process in the early 1980s (Galizzi, 2010; Sharp and
Broomhill, 1990, 2002). Moreover, scholars guided and monitored these developments
by publishing their insights in books (Budlender and Hewitt, 2002; Budlender et al.,
2002; Elson and Sharp, 2010; Ng, 2016, O’Hagan, 2018), conference proceedings
(Judd, 2002) and –increasingly –academic journals (Himmelweit, 2002; Rubin and
Bartle, 2005; Sharp and Broomhill, 1990, 2002; Steccolini, 2019). A widely used defin-
ition of gender budgeting is a ‘gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a
gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process’(Council of Europe, 2005:
10). Stakeholders, such as citizens, can therefore use gender budgeting for holding gov-
ernments accountable for their policies and actions in the field of gender equality, with the
goal of promoting material equality among people of all genders (Sharp and Broomhill,
2002).
The academic discourse on gender budgeting is interdisciplinary, encompassing
research from accounting and finance, education, feminist economics and non-profit
studies, among others (Budlender, 2002; Elson and Sharp, 2010; Morrissey, 2018;
Nolte et al., 2021; Steinthórsdóttir et al., 2020). Thus a growing body of the gender lit-
erature points out that interdisciplinarity ‘mediates the status of feminist knowledge’
(Pearse et al., 2019: 116). In addition to this interdisciplinarity, studies also differ in
their aims. Some studies are normative, proposing how governments can implement
gender budgeting instruments (e.g. Budlender et al., 2002; Elson, 2000). Other studies
are purely descriptive, offering insights into different countries’gender budgeting
Polzer et al. 451
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