Saturday 08 November 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
VENEZUELA:
Budgets Take On a
Woman’s Face
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS (IPS) - As
Venezuela increasingly
incorporates a gender
perspective in its
public budgets, issues
like the paving of roads
and the construction of
schools are being joined
by new priorities such
as teen pregnancy and
domestic violence
prevention programmes
when it comes to
spending.
"Good intentions or
desires are not
sufficient to achieve
social equality and
gender equity. Spaces
must be built to further
these goals, and for
that, the specific
allocation of budget
funds is essential,"
legislator Flor Ríos,
chair of the Women’s
Commission in
Venezuela’s
single-chamber
parliament, told IPS.
Economist Masaya
Llavaneras, who
coordinated a government
project to design and
implement
gender-sensitive
budgets, commented to
IPS that a first major
accomplishment is that
"the need for greater
spending on gender
equality and to break
down the groups of
beneficiaries of public
policies by gender have
been made visible."
Since the United Nations
Development Fund for
Women (UNIFEM) and
partner organisations
launched the
Gender-Responsive
Budgeting Initiative in
the mid-1990s, the
project has expanded to
nearly 40 countries in
Southern Africa, Eastern
Africa, South East Asia,
South Asia, Central
America and South
America’s Andean region.
As UNIFEM explains,
"Gender-responsive
budget analysis simply
refers to the analysis
of (the impact of)
actual government
expenditure and revenue
on women and girls as
compared to men and
boys. Gender budgets are
not separate budgets for
women and they don't aim
to solely increase
spending on
women-specific
programmes."
The idea is to see how
these allocations affect
the economic and social
opportunities of women
and men.
In the case of
Venezuela, President
Hugo Chávez issued
instructions in May 2005
for the principle of
gender equality to be
incorporated into
budgets, "with the aim
of ensuring that
government policies and
programmes equally
benefit women, men, boys
and girls," according to
the proposal adopted by
the Finance Ministry.
That marked the start of
an assessment of how the
different state
institutions manage
budgets in Venezuela,
said Llavaneras. "In the
public administration,
there are more than 500
institutions designing
and handling budgets at
the national level
alone," she pointed out.
"Our challenge has been
a cultural one: to
generate the conditions
so that gender problems
are seen as just that --
a problem. In other
words, that they are
seen as a hurdle which,
if unaddressed, makes
budgets inefficient and
ineffective," said the
economist.
Are gender-responsive
budgets more expensive?
asked IPS.
"No," said Ríos. "This
is not about changing
budgets but about
breaking them down, in
order to see the gender
gap more clearly. For
example, when a breast
cancer prevention
campaign is made more
visible in the context
of a health programme,
or information on teen
pregnancy is highlighted
in the education
budget."
Llavaneras agreed that
gender-sensitive budgets
are not more costly.
But in some cases,
certain portions of a
budget should be
increased, said Ríos.
"For instance, when we
suggest that all of the
country’s region’s
should have special
courts for dealing with
gender violence cases,
or that female prisoners
should be held in
different prisons, not
in a wing or annex of
men’s prisons."
Another illustration of
mainstreaming a gender
perspective in budgets
is the inclusion of an
estimate of how many
jobs would be created
for people of each
gender, in any project
aimed at boosting
employment, said
Llavaneras.
"It is no coincidence
that the year before the
president gave
instructions on gender
equality in budgets, a
study by the United
Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) showed
that the average income
of men in Venezuela
stood at 7,550 dollars a
year -- 2.4 times the
3,125 dollars a year
average income reported
for women," she said.
Ríos said her fellow
lawmakers -- the
majority of whom belong,
like her, to the
governing United
Socialist Party of
Venezuela -- have become
increasingly aware of
the need to incorporate
a gender perspective,
although she said it is
"the awareness and the
words of President
Chávez that drop by drop
and day by day have
promoted these changes."
Experiments at the
municipal level
A gender perspective is
gradually being
incorporated into the
national budget,
although slowly,
"because the annual
budget has a very strict
cycle," said Llavaneras.
But the idea of
gender-sensitive
budgeting has barely
started to "trickle
down" to the country’s
23 states and 335
municipalities, she
said.
The exception is the
municipality of Caroní,
which encompasses Ciudad
Guayana, an industrial
city located at the
confluence of the
Orinoco and Caroní
Rivers in northeastern
Venezuela, where major
hydroelectricity plants
and iron, aluminum and
steel factories are
located.
Since the mid-1990s, the
leftist mayors that
govern the city and its
suburbs have held public
assemblies to discuss
the use of the municipal
budget. That culture of
broad public
participation
facilitated the adoption
of the gender-sensitive
budget initiative in the
last few years.
"The first thing we take
into consideration is
that not everyone has
the same access to and
control over resources,
the same use of time;
some people have double
and triple workdays, and
that has been taken into
account to make
participation possible
for those who were
unable to take part in
discussions on the
budget," Solana Simao,
with the local women’s
group Fundamujer,
commented to IPS.
"Women attend the
participatory budget
assemblies much more
than men," explained
Simao, who is an adviser
to the city government
on the issue of
gender-responsive
budgets.
But Llavaneras said
"there is some confusion
between attendance and
participation, because
when it comes time to
make decisions, the
women were often called
away to other tasks, and
the men, who formed a
majority present at the
time, decided."
One solution that was
implemented in
participatory budget
assemblies in Caroní was
to change the schedule
and to make sure that
child care was available
during the meetings, to
make it possible for
mothers with small
children to dedicate
more attention to the
discussions, and to stay
longer.
Year after year, "the
priorities named by the
participatory budget
assemblies were subjects
like the paving of
roads, better mass
transportation, and
improved public safety
and garbage collection.
But last year, the
communities added other
ones, like the
prevention of violence
against women, teen
pregnancy and drug
addiction, and the
strengthening of women’s
rights," said Simao.
"In addition, funding
for the Casa de la Mujer
(Women’s House), which
provides information and
care on sexual and
reproductive health and
gender violence, grew
from 1,400 dollars to
11,500 dollars, and a
23,000 dollar
contribution to
Fundamujer was
guaranteed as a regular
income. But these are
not the central aims of
the gender focus," said
the activist.
The most important
thing, she said, is that
everyone now has a voice
in how municipal budget
funds are used, and that
the municipal
authorities have
understood that only by
making inequalities
visible can they be
fought by means of
specific actions and
policies.
New steps forward
Llavaneras said it is
positive that the
incorporation of a
gender perspective in
budgets has escaped the
extreme political
polarisation that has
divided Venezuela
between supporters and
opponents of the
charismatic and
controversial left-wing
Chávez over the last
decade.
She also recommended
that the new focus be
adopted more widely by
local and regional
governments, as well as
by the grassroots
community councils
promoted by the Chávez
administration.
In that process, she
added, it is very
important that national
oversight and regulatory
bodies enforce the
adoption of
gender-responsive
budgets by local and
regional governments.
The economist also
called for improved
gender-specific
statistics.
Ríos, meanwhile,
stressed the necessity
of "awareness-raising
and political training
campaigns, to enable
women to not only seek
positions of public
representation but also
posts in which budgets
are managed, in order to
promote and guarantee
the participation and
focus that make budgets
gender-sensitive."
Finally, the president’s
insistence on the issue
and parliament’s
openness to
incorporating a gender
perspective have
prompted Ríos and others
to draw up a draft law
that would gradually
create an income for
homemakers, which would
come from the state.
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