Transcript Slide 1

THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN
INTRODUCING GENDER-RESPONSIVE
BUDGETING IN SERBIA (UN WOMEN
EXPERIENCES)
Nevena Ivanovic, UN Women Serbia
Vienna, February 29 2012
INITIATIVES IN SERBIA 2007-2011: TWO
PHASES


Phase 1: Entry points identified (2007-2009):
 Provincial government (gender equality authority since
2002, legal act on gender equality 2005, team)
 Civil society eager to engage at the local/municipal level
 No national GE framework, weak mechanisms
 Pilot GRB projects mostly done as a combination of ‘service’
to and pressure on local government
Phase 2: Support for analysis, advocacy and capacity building
(2010-2012)
 UN Women project in Serbia & Montengro (2010-2012)
includes component on gender advocates and monitoring of
(local) policies and budgets
 Funding to projects to monitor, analyse, advocate
 Capacity building for a group of NGOs (on GRB too)
 Environment somewhat changed – GE Law passed in
2009, some results achieved, although challenges remain
BACKGROUND – CIVIL SOCIETY AND
GENDER

Relatively strong women’s movement and civil society in
general:







grassroots presence
long history of antiwar and antinationalist activism and on
GBV issues, political representation
36 organizations participate 2005-6 in creating a National
Plan of Action on Women
Push for quota in local elections in 2004, e.g.
But weak on economic issues/governance – still true in 2012
Legal and institutional framework for gender equality in
place since 2009 (Vojvodina first, but GEL 09, NAP)
Capacity building efforts and initiatives since 2001 – STAR
initiative, NOR Women Can Do It – integrated economic
decision making and considerations of budgets in gender
equality trainings for women in all sectors: it’s a long road
PHASE 1: BACKGROUND: FRAMEWORK





No national Gender Equality Law at time project
began
Province: legal act on gender equality 2005, affecting
GEMs in its territory (stronger)
Constitution introduces “equality between women and
men” and “positive measures policy” in 2006
Gender Equality Mechanisms (GEMs): voluntary,
different institutional solutions, highly dependent on
political will and personal enthusiasm
Political representation at time of project beginning:
after quota in 2004, % of women local councilors 20%
on average (diverse across municipalities)
PHASE 1: CONTEXT FOR PILOT GRB
INITIATIVES
Slow and partial transfer of powers to the units
of local government
 Volatile coalition politics
 Still predominant line budgets
 No obvious legal foundation for the
mainstreaming of gender concerns into local
decision-making processes
 Non-existant or weak local mechanisms

PHASE 1: WHAT (THEN)UNIFEM
SUPPORTED

Who: Three NGOs from Vojvodina; Where: municipalities,
mostly in Vojvodina
2007-08: Backi Petrovac; Pančevo, Valjevo and Kragujevac
 2009: Kovačica, Bački Petrovac, Žitište; Stara Pazova, Irig,
and Pančevo


Against the backdrop:
pioneering civil society efforts to set up some of the
preconditions for GRB
Their focus:
 raising awareness about the connections between budgets and
issues of women’s condition and gender equality, advocacy +
pressure
 setting up a legal and policy background that requires gender
issues to be taken into account
 learning about and training others on basic tools for
integrating a gender perspective into local decision-making
processes and administrative practices
 Performing small scale gender analysis (spectrum of
sophistication…)

PHASE 1:CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED





No genuine political will or interest in supporting a
gender-equality initiatives (even when agreements
made)
Line item budgets and “traditional” budgetary process
(weak links to priorities or policies, where they have
been defined), coupled in 2008 with the crises in
funding
Weak institutional capacities for policy development;
resistance to change
Weak institutional legitimacy and internal capacity of
gender equality mechanisms (GEM) (no clear
mandate or weak mandate); or, no GEM at all (the
case of Bački Petrovac municipality)
Lack of gender-disaggregated data and other data
needed to monitor gender; lack of capacity and
knowledge on using data
PHASE 1: RESPONSES (1)

Adjusting the scale, aims and tools based on
context/environment





Basic skills building and awareness raising for
environments where talk of gender and gender equality is
new;
Supporting GEMs and developing new, contextualized tools
for those environments where previous gender equalityrelated work has been done;
Assessing data availability and conducting gender analysis
and reviews of documents and policies, to define needs for
data collecting and targeted research efforts;
Looking for gender in policy and strategic documents and
for women in decision-making; budget scrutiny is, however,
limited by the line item approach, and usually is done last,
with recommendations on allocations likely to be general
Criticism of local government practices needs to be
carefully presented as it may strain already weak
partnerships between civil society and local government
PHASE 1: RESPONSES (2)

Creating legal foundations for gender-based
policy and budget interventions
Statute interventions (local expertise, using existing
documents)
 Establishing GEMs (longer process) – but it has
advanced a lot since!
 Local Act/Decision on Gender Equality – replication
since





Cooperation with renowned constitutional law expert on
drafting it
Engaging local stakeholders – GEM but also women’s groups if
active in the community
Pressure to have it adopted – inside and outside
Once adopted – use as grounds for further capacity building to
fulfill mandate, as well as funds for GEM and priority gender
equality activities
PHASE 1: RESPONSES (3)

Strategic alignments: ‘catching the moment’ of
administrative, political or policy change, or
addressing a specific local issue with a gender
lens
Local development Strategy drafting process – supportive
mayor and ongoing drafting process of a major
development document (S. Pazova)
 New systematization of municipal jobs: first instance of
gender equality as part of the official job description
(Zitiste)
 Donor support to program budgeting: gender becomes
integrated in one segment in the template (Backi Petrovac)

Behind-the-scene lobbying and reliance on personal
relationships, integrity or influence, or leverage of other
outside actors often used to strengthen appeal
 Balance between: potential for leading reforms with GRB
vs. seen as challenging status quo

PHASE 1: RESPONSES (4)

Conducting simple, practical and targeted research on
issues of interest to inform recommendations & build
arguments for GE (examples)

Stara Pazova: Under the pilot initiative, three local experts work with
the municipal GEM; conduct a survey and focus group discussions
with men and women small business owners, in order to assess their
needs and the problems they faced in their work


Recommendations, in the shape of proposed activities and objectives,
integrated into the Sustainable Development Strategy adopted in late 2009
Strategy includes 2 programs and 8 subprograms targeting women, support
to women’s entrepreneurship, and to the local gender equality mechanism

Research on women’s contribution to local economy – one set of
recommendations focuses on needs for improved employability and
economic activity of women (transport/mobility) (Backi Petrovac)

“Gender Barometers” in two towns – women’s and men’s skills, needs,
expectations, willingness to engage in certain economic activity –
important to feed into planning of subsidies, support mechanisms
(conducted professionally; data has been used a since, and was
published in one town)
LESSONS LEARNT FROM PHASE 1







Enthusiasm and learning by doing: significant capacity development (civil
society and independent consultants/researchers)
Realistic: seeing building of capacity as PART of “watchdog” role
Learned to employ GRB as a tool for tackling real-life problems of socioeconomic development within the communities they worked in – seizing the
moment
Capacity of local GEM – crucial for sustainability, good partnerships developed
(capacity for influencing policies/measures)
Reaching out to non-traditional partners: working with local bureaucrats (even
if women, gender blind), decisions makers (men)
Institututional framework important – but since December 2009 GEL in place,
can be used to boost work in 2010 and beyond
Awareness raising: appealing and inclusive campaign by WEA in three
municipalities (4 languages, members of the community speak about very
practical needs of women and importance of gender equality)
LESSONS (2)



Successes – depend on the political will of elected officials
and the responsiveness of senior administrators, whose
buy-in and role is crucial for further mainstreaming of
gender into the budgetary process
Civil society can advocate, motivate and provide support in
form of expert guidance for analysis and tools development
BUT it cannot replace the will, motivation, knowledgeable
engagement and strength of mandate of those whose job is
ultimately to ensure that men’s and women’s needs are
taken into consideration in local development
PHASE 2: CHANGED CONTEXT FOR
CONTINUATION IN 2010, BUT HOW MUCH HAS
CHANGED?
Law in Gender Equality finally passed, even if
relatively weak
 Slow and partial transfer of powers to the units
of local government
 Volatile coalition politics
 Still predominant line budgets
 No obvious legal foundation for the
mainstreaming of gender concerns into local
decision-making processes. – to some extent still true –

NGOs very important in reminding and “reading out”
legislation to local governments; providing ideas in the
consultation processes
PHASE 2: ACTIVITIES AND APPROACHES


Funding to four NGOs (some of which learned about GRB
under another project, independent of UN women)
Parallel to this, start a series of capacity building sessions,
aimed to respond to the gaps identified with women’s NGOs
before – aim to improve ability to contribute to, and/or
monitor, Topics: the integration of gender into local policy and
budgetary processes.
 Monitoring of policies, gender analysis and gender
responsive budgeting
 Advocacy and lobbying for gender budgeting/policy
initiatives + monitoring
 Understanding and using data (from sources at national
and local level) and developing/working with indicators
PHASE 2: DIFFERENT FOCUS OF
PROJECTS – EXAMPLES:

Different focus of projects – examples:

Engendering of local development policies/proposing amendments
to existing development strategies (including on rural tourism)
based on genders audits of local development programs and the
mapping of women’s resources (3 new municipalities in Vojvodina,
including the city of Subotica)

Gender mainstreaming of employment measures – monitoring
and gender analysis of the implementation of the local
employment action plan and proposing additional or improved
measures based on a small scale survey of unemployed
marginalized women (Krusevac)

Monitoring and analysis of agricultural measures and allocations,
and the local employment action plan, to improve opportunities
for rural women – proposing reallocations; based on grass roots
work, propose new employment schemes for women (Uzice)
PHASE 2: KEY RESULTS

Case of Uzice






Statute change, stronger mechanism
Budget reallocations – some
New employment schemes – adopted for local plan in
2012 (public works for hard to employ women +
environmental benefits)
Grass roots based and working directly with rural
women
New recognition among decision-makers (resistance
to ‘issue’ (gender equality), respect for advocates and
realization that needs and development benefits are
genuine
Responses to challenges in work on project/advocacy
– capacity building by UN Women reported to help
PHASE 2: OVERALL CHALLENGES (FOR
GRB) REMAIN





Political will to support gender-equality initiatives – does exist in
place, often has to do with personal respect and loyalties to NGO
advocates
Line item budgets and “traditional” budgetary process – still true
Weak institutional capacities for policy development; resistance
to change – some advances made, lots of donor-assisted processes
and opening towards using domestic outside expertise
Weak institutional legitimacy and internal capacity of gender
equality mechanisms (GEM) (no clear mandate or weak
mandate); or, no GEM at all – changed a good deal, at least 25
mechanisms quite active, and up to 80-90 exist on paper; there is
more networking and cooperation with NGOs – at NGO initiative
most often, but some are good allies
Lack of gender-disaggregated data and other data needed to
monitor gender; lack of capacity and knowledge on using data –
it’s a work in progress, but tools have been made and
disseminated; more actors recognize this as a key need + now we
have legal ground (GEL); skills improved among advocates
PHASE 2: LESSONS AND LOOKING
FORWARD…

Women’s NGOs better equipped to advocate, motivate and provide support in form of
expert guidance for analysis and tools development – more than before, significant
capacity development and now experience






BUT – need to continue; and recognize limitations, include other NGOs - this is bound to happen
anyway…
Connection to real-life problem: it is the reason why work is done
Realistic: not so much building of capacity of local government – focus on GEM, or
just working on their own as advocates, with administration and government
Capacity of local GEM – have become allies in some cases, although few, more work
needs to be done so GEMs too have capacity for influencing policies/measures
Institututional framework important – has definitely helped, but implementation at
local level can remain illusive
Awareness raising: not so much a compontent in current projects, will see whether it
will have been a weakness; more work with decision-makers
Still true: successes depend on the political will of elected officials and the
responsiveness of senior administrators to concrete proposals benefiting
women
BUT NGOs ARE the crucial actors who can maintain the attention, drive gender
equality agenda if included in GEMs, participate in development through working
groups and informal connections
POST SCRIPTUM: ACTIVITIES
AND RESULTS – REGION
ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS – BOS, MAC,
REGION




Bosnia 2006-10: NGO United Women Banjaluka successfully
advocates for state funding for shelters for women victims of
violence (RS entity)
Macedonia 2008-09: gender analysis of social services and
education allocation in two municipalities
Bosnia – present:
 capacity building to local rural women’s groups to do small
scale budget review and policy advocacy (done by strong
gender mechanism at entity level)
 NGO analysis and initiative to harmonize maternity
benefits across BiH (ongoing)
Regional NGO training for B. and M. NGOs (present), focus
on:
 Role of NGOs in policy/budgeting cycle
 Possible points for intervention identified
(CONTINUED) ALBANIA:



NGO role in identifying key issues and problems for women in
two municipalities where UN Women piloted budget and
policy analysis in 2009, with focus on how national policies
and assistance schemes actually work
Major issue identified through beneficiary analysis of the Law
on Social Service and Assistance (remit of the national
government): law assumes head of household is a man, many
women-headed h. do not qualify; also, when women receive the
aid, money spent on essentials more often (not bars and
phones)
In 2011, amendments passed, include expanding category of
“female headed households” eligible for economic aid to
women: victims of DV, women in a process of divorce from
their husbands, trafficked women and families in blood feud.