Investing In Women: Towards Gender Responsive Budgeting

Investing In Women: Towards Gender Responsive Budgeting

Forum for Women in democracy (FOWODE) with the assistance from UNDP is
organising a gender budget sub regional conference. This conference is the
last activity of our grassroots women leaders project. Other activities
done under this project include gender budget training workshop, gender
advocacy training workshop and the gender budget advocacy campaign
workshop. This is a five-day conference and is scheduled to take place in
June 2002.

CONFERENCE BACKGROUND.
Forum for Women in democracy (FOWODE) with the assistance from UNDP is
organising a gender budget sub regional conference. This conference is the
last activity of our grassroots women leaders project. Other activities
done under this project include gender budget training workshop, gender
advocacy training workshop and the gender budget advocacy campaign
workshop. This is a five-day conference and is scheduled to take place from
17th - 21st June June 2002.

Conference theme:
"Investing In Women: Towards Gender Responsive Budgeting"

Rationale for this conference:
To share countries experiences of gender budget initiatives in the eastern
sub region of Africa and further advocate for gender equity in budgets.

Immediate objectives:
1. To increase awareness about the concept and deepen understanding of
gender budgeting.
2. To assess the progress made in specific countries
3. To explore ways in which gender budgeting can be used as a tool to
engender macroeconomic policy, MTEF, and public expenditure review to
monitor implementation of poverty eradication strategies
4. Document and disseminate countries experiences in gender budgeting.

Expected output:
1. Sharing of conceptual frameworks, research methods and advocacy
strategies used in various genders budget initiatives.
2. Formation of an informal network of gender-responsive budget activists
to collaborate continuously
3. A report of specific country experiences highlights successful
strategies and lessons learnt.

Target group:
Representatives of civil society organisations that are interested in
economic policy and budget analysis and advocacy and in particular gender
budgeting will attend the conference. Government officials involved in
gender budget initiatives, representative of intergovernmental bodies
involved in gender and economic policy analysis and advocacy such as United
nations Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA), East Africa Community (EAC),
Intergovernmental Development Authority (IGAD) and Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC) gender units will also be invited. Donors who
are interested in funding gender budget programmes activities will be
encouraged to participate.

Conference activities:
The conference will have sessions on the following areas:
1. Keynote address on 'macroeconomics and gender- Teach In' session.

2. Technical papers to be presented
a. Gender Poverty reduction and Economic growth - the linkages
b. A gender analysis of macroeconomic polices in sub-Saharan Africa
c. Gender budgeting: tools and techniques
d. Gender budgeting at the local government level
e. Gender and revenue analysis United Kingdom experience
f. Challenges of integrating gender budgeting techniques into the national
budget cycle

3 Two training workshops
a) Gender and Macroeconomic teach in
b) Gender and trade

3. Three papers on countries experiences in implementing gender budget
initiatives
a. Tanzania experience in gender budgeting
b. Uganda's experience in gender budgeting
c. Kenya's experience in gender budgeting.

4. Two workshops to discuss and concretise the presentations made

5. Countries invited
a. Host Uganda
b. Ethiopia
c. Rwanda
d. Kenya
e. Tanzania

CONTACT:
Mukunda Julius Mugisha
FOWODE
email: [email protected]