Gender budgeting is an application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. It subsumes a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporation of a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process, and restructuring of revenues and expenditures to promote gender equality.1 A gender-friendly budget should ensure that general development goals do not work against social
and economic equity and do not reinforce the existing development disparities among regions, ethnic groups, race, and other forms of social organization, while taking into account that at the core of these disparities there are persistently hidden sex biases. The overall goal of the study was to document gender budgeting best practices through the development of case studies at the country and regional levels. More specifically, the VOICENET team was to clarify gender-budgeting issues by providing substantive information on four primary levels: Conduct country-level studies; Identify legal issues related to gender budgeting at the country level; Provide country-level information by identifying the skills and knowledge gaps for building capacity for analyzing and advocating gender budgeting by governmental and nongovernmental organizations; Assess the critical questions for gender budgeting across African regional levels by documenting comparative data on gender budgeting.
