Tackling Inequality through Gender Budgeting: A Practice Based Approach

The proposed project aims to further enhance and consolidate the capacity and competence of key stakeholders to apply gender budgeting in NI, to influence policy and budgetary processes and the way in which financial allocations are made to deliver gender equality and to protect human rights. We envisage the key stakeholders to be government officials (policy leads, finance directors and equality practitioners), civil society (which will have to assume an important scrutiny and lobbying role) and strategic investment and delivery bodies (Strategic Investment Board, Procurement Board, NI Housing Executive). To achieve the above aim and adopting a practice-based perspective, we will: (a) work in partnership with strategic investment and delivery bodies, to develop a suite of case studies which demonstrate the application and utility of gender budgeting analysis in a local context; and (b) work collaboratively with the ECNI and the NI Civil Service, to deliver bespoke gender budgeting training which reflects NI specific institutional arrangements to government officials; (c) through training, further develop knowledge of gender budgeting and the skills required to scrutinize policy and budgets within civil society; (d) through training, continue to inform and lobby politicians on the benefits and importance of gender budgeting as a means of enhancing gender equality and ensuring transparent and effective spending decisions.