National planning and budgeting

Photo: UN Women/Janarbek Amankulov

Too often, national plans and budgets fail to ensure that public services respond to women’s needs and priorities. Addressing these gaps is a strategic opportunity for the Government to meet its gender equality commitments. Gender-responsive budgeting encourages a comprehensive assessment of gender gaps and helps governments devise specific measures to close those gaps.

UN Women works with the Ministry of Economy and the National Commission on Women, Family and Demographic Policy to integrate women’s gender-specific needs into Kazakhstan’s national development programmes and inter-governmental processes. Much of this work assists Kazakhstan to develop and meet national targets for gender-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – particularly SDG 5, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

UN Women in Action in Kazakhstan

  • Assessed in 2017 the gender-responsiveness of agricultural sector state programmes and recommended ways to enhance their gender effectiveness.
  • Organised capacity-building trainings on gender and budgeting for central and local executive authorities. In September 2017, 88 public officials from the Aktobe, Akmola and Southern Kazakhstan regions were trained in gender equality concepts and methods, gender analysis instruments, and gender-responsive budget planning using specifically developed modules.
  • Developed a gender analysis methodology for use by public agencies in key economic sectors and produced SDG-related training modules on gender analysis, sex disaggregated indicators, and gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and policies.

In 2018, UN Women is implementing initiatives to introduce Kazakhstan-specific gender-responsive budgeting measures arising from SDGs 1, 5, 10, 16 and 17. These include capacity-building so central and regional bodies can develop gender-sensitive policies and budgeting and improve budget planning and implementation by more effectively addressing women and men’s specific economic and social needs.

  • In June 2018, UN Women Kazakhstan organized a study-tour on gender-responsive planning and budgeting to the Republic of Austria. Kazakhstan state bodies had a first-hand look at how Austrian state bodies handle general policy and gender-responsive budgeting, integrate gender aspects into national planning and budgeting systems, and their gender impact assessment systems.
  • In May 2018, UN Women held cluster workshops to build capacity so state representatives could:
    • Implement gender-responsive budgeting ;
    • Review regional development programmes to further integrate gender;
    • Discuss final recommendations of a gender analysis report in agricultural sector;
    • Develop recommendations to integrate gender-responsive budgeting into regional development programmes .
  • In September 2018, four cluster trainings for civil servants will be conducted by an international gender-responsive budgeting Participants will:
    • Learn best international gender-responsive budgeting practices;
    • Work with state strategic programmes to make them gender responsive and sensitive;
    • Practice using effective gender-responsive budgeting