UN Women in Action: Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting

Recent UN Women national planning and budgeting successes in Europe and Central Asia include: 

• With the support of UN Women, the governments of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kazakhstan and Serbia have become more gender-sensitive with their budgetary distributions. Including more gender-specific objectives in their budgets than ever before has resulted in increased funds to work towards gender equality.
• The capacities of both governments and CSOs to implement gender-responsive budgeting was increased through learning exchanges developed and facilitated by UN Women. To this aim, five regional exchange workshops were held with public officials from across the region, and an informal network of budget watchdogs on gender equality was created with a group of CSOs from Albania, North Macedonia and Moldova.
• Moldova, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia now all have e-Learning modules on gender-responsive budgeting available as part of public administration training, with the undertaking of these modules being mandatory in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.
• The Albanian Ministry of Finance improved its budget planning and preparation processes through the selection of gender-sensitive ‘Key Performance Indicators’ that will enable the monitoring of expenditures and progress on gender equality against objectives set as part of the planning process.
• In North Macedonia, line ministries must now include at least one gender-sensitive indicator in their strategic plans, as well as an analysis of the impact of their work on the lives of both women and men, due to reforms of their strategic planning methodology.