Research carried out in France by French geographer Yves Raibaud between 2009 and 2012 showed that the number of girls taking part in, and therefore benefitting from the sports activities subsidised by municipalities was half the number of boys. In the case of skateparks, more specifically, the use of these public facilities was 95 per cent male. The gap, which is also present when it comes to cultural activities, in-creases with age and particularly during adolescence. “There are, for example, no subsidies for horse riding, as it’s considered private. It is even subject to VAT now. Another example is dance, which is considered to be a commercial activity and is rarely subsidised, whereas activities where boys predominate, such as football or rugby, are often free,” Raibaud, who also wrote the book La ville faite par et pour les hommes (Towns Made By and For Men), published in 2015, told Equal Times.

To address the fact increasingly underlined by sociologists that public policies tend to benefit men more than women, it is important to look at the impact of public service financing on gender inequalities.

Action can be taken to reverse the trend. Raibaud worked closely with the municipal authorities in the French city of Bordeaux. On learning that 80 per cent of the Bordeaux summer leisure offer ‘Sport on the Quays’ was taken up by boys in 2011, the deputy mayor had it changed to attract more girls, by offering activities such as gymnastics. And it worked. “During the summer of 2019, we had 52 per cent female participation rate as compared with 20 per cent eight years ago,” says Raibaud.

Gender budgeting, a practice that emerged in Australia in 1984, enables public ad-ministrations to take on board gender inequalities, with a view to reducing them, when preparing their budgets.

According to the Council of Europe’s definition, it is “an application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process”. The practice is part of a broader gender mainstreaming approach to public policy making, a concept popularised since the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

Although examples of gender-responsive budgeting have emerged in various parts of the world over the last 30 years, it is by no means common practice. In Europe, municipalities are leading the way, with examples of good practices being set by Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin and Ixelles, in Belgium, whereas state-level authorities are lagging behind when it comes to adopting a broad approach.

Ixelles paves the way

In 2014, Ixelles, one of the 19 municipalities in the Brussels region of Belgium, decided to embark on a comprehensive approach to gender budgeting. Now, every municipal department and its budget is subject to gender analysis. “We were the first municipality in Belgium to implement it,” says Viviane Teitelbaum, who was a councillor in the commune of Ixelles at the time and a member of parliament in the French-speaking community of Belgium. It was at her request that the principle of gender budgeting was included in the general policy programme in 2012 and then implemented in 2015.

Since then, each item of spending has been classed under one of three headings: ‘neutral’ (has no gender dimension); ‘explicitly dedicated to the reduction of inequalities’; or ‘includes a gender dimension’ (impacts the respective situations of women and men in society). Staff members are then required to prepare a ‘gender note’ for spending under the second and third headings, which is taken on board when preparing the budget. This classification system – specific to Belgium – is considered by some French sociologists to be the most advanced in the application of gender-responsive budgeting.

In Ixelles, it is applied to all sectors, from culture to transport or even urban planning. “We started with the paving stones, road and pavement surfaces. There are streets that are difficult for women to walk on in heels or with pushchairs, so we started in-vesting in that. The height of the street lighting was changed, for example, to make the lighting more effective, to make the streets less dark and therefore safer for women,” Teitelbaum tells Equal Times.

The local councillor observed a new dynamic within the various municipal departments: “Once you put on your gender glasses it becomes difficult to take them off again.

“We had proposals from certain departments that went even further in this direction. The councillor in charge of culture initially told me that there wasn’t much to be done. But we then realised that we were only exhibiting men’s work, so we included women in exhibitions, and on the juries [editor’s note: that select the projects].”

Inspiration is drawn from the Austrian capital, Vienna, one of the most accomplished cities in this field. Its budget has been entirely subject to gender analysis since 2006. The Viennese, for example, have enjoyed access to free child care facilities for ten years. An impact analysis from December 2019 showed that female employment had increased by 1.5 points for women aged 20 to 39 with young children since free municipal child care was introduced. The extension of a metro line has also contributed to reducing the unemployment rate for women (by 0.7 per cent) living near the new station. The reduction measured was greater in this neighbourhood than in the rest of the city and was correlated with the findings of a municipal survey from 1999, which showed that two thirds of the journeys made on foot in the city were made by women. The same study showed that men made greater use of personal vehicles than women, who make better use of public transport.

A lax legal framework

In Belgium, the law of 12 January 2007 provides that federal administrations should apply a gender perspective to the preparation of public policies and budgets. Thirteen years on, however, and still not all of the country’s federal public services (FPS) are implementing gender budgeting. According to an interim report on gender equality policy, between 2014 and 2016, five out of 17 FPS did not implement gender budgeting. And of those that have implemented it, at least four said that their spending has no gender impact. According to Teitelbaum, expenditure is often placed under heading one (gender neutral), by default, to avoid coming up against any challenges.

At municipal level, in Belgium, the practice of gender budgeting is recommended but not compulsory. Its implementation is therefore a matter of goodwill. In the Brussels-Capital Region, the municipalities of Schaerbeek and Etterbeek are gradually embracing the idea by applying it to certain areas such as youth, sport and culture.

The impact of this budgeting practice on gender inequalities cannot yet be fully measured, given the wide disparity of experiences and the lack of systematisation.

Only empirical studies would allow us to determine whether new street lighting or pavement surfacing has helped to equalise the number of men and women using a public space. But the municipalities that have decided to move in this direction, even if only partially, are seeing some encouraging signs.

For Isabelle Guéguen, co-director of the Perfégal cooperative and a consultant in gender equality, gender-responsive budgeting is an effective mechanism for reducing inequalities. Her work has allowed her to make concrete proposals in the areas of culture or economic support, encouraging local bodies to support women as much as men in the establishment of new businesses, for example.

Raibaud has also been called on to contribute his expertise in applying gender to public tenders, such as in the construction of a new school, taking into account the use of space made by each individual and adapting it to their needs. “I worked, for example, on the layout of the toilets, making sure they were clearly visible and separate. As for the changing rooms, we made sure that the girls could access the sports facilities directly, without going through a corridor, and that the sports facilities were protected from prying eyes,” he explains.

“There’s a real need for educational work”

There are, however, significant obstacles to the implementation of gender budgeting, which is why so few administrations have implemented it. In Etterbeek, an ‘experimental’ commune in the Brussels region, gender budgeting was initially applied to all spending in 2017, but due to time constraints and staff shortages the municipality had to backtrack and is currently applying it to just four departments. For Guéguen, put-ting gender budgeting into practice is difficult, as two different areas of expertise have to be mobilised. “It requires coordination between the public finance department and the gender equality officer,” she says. “But they often have very different back-grounds. There is a real need for educational work.”

Teitelbaum had to fight hard to convince the elected representatives and civil servants in her municipality. “There are some who fear they will lose funding, or that it represents an added workload, so we had to work hard to inform and convince them. The regional authorities organised training sessions for finance directors, for the people who work on the budget and who implement it. Then we had to explain that it would not be a huge added workload.” But she feels that this investment and educational work has yielded positive results.

In France, Guéguen also notes that, at first, local authorities tend not to understand why gender budgeting should concern them. “I have found that public servants in local authorities need to be convinced that the action they take on everyone’s behalf can have an impact on gender equality. Because there is a belief in France that public action is egalitarian.”

In France, the 2014 Law for Real Gender Equality requires the mayors of municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants, as well as regional and departmental councils, to draw up a report on the gender equality situation prior to budget discussions (article 61). Yet none of the country’s local authorities apply gender budgeting across the board. Cities such as Ivry-sur-Seine, Brest, Bordeaux and Grenoble have adopted a gender approach in sectors such as culture, leisure and sport.

Back in 2003, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in favour of gender budgeting within the institutions of the European Union, its member states, and their local and regional authorities. But as the text was not binding, very few member states and even EU bodies themselves have taken up the recommendation.

In 2018, the European Union Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) concluded that gender mainstreaming was not yet fully applied to EU spending. The European Parliament and European Council, which have repeatedly called on member states to use this tool, are also far from reaching gender parity when it comes to senior positions in their own administrations. And yet gender budgeting goes hand in hand with the presence of women in decision-making bodies.

The EIGE recommendations include using financial deterrents (such as those applied to environmental goals) to ensure the effective implementation of gender equality policies. It is an idea, like parity in politics, that still has a long way to go before reaching all levels of governance.