Gender Responsive Budgeting and Women in Sri Lanka

This paper investigates, through a gender lens, how budgets are conceived, planned, approved, executed, monitored, analyzed and audited. It involves an analysis of government expenditure on women as compared to expenditure on men. The methodology was designed to analyze the budgets of two Provincial Councils and selected budgets of 11 Ministries with 6 Ministries in more detail at a national level to understand how budget allocations prioritize the needs of women. As monitoring of the impact of financial policies on women is more complex, the study was re-focused to include selected Districts level budgets and the involvement of Civil Society Organizations. The analysis of financial policies and budgets shows that it is a complex process due to lack of clarity in how budgets are allocated and there was no reliable information generated, and the funding system itself is a challenge for tracking as the provincial councils, ministries and other agencies through which state services are delivered received funds from the state sources and donors which leave many gaps in data. Generally, Sri Lanka’s budgeting process and outcome monitoring was gender neutral. Impact monitoring in health and education is the strongest as gender disaggregated data and considerable attention has been paid in bridging the gender gaps but not in all other sectors. Also, the study found that there were significant disparities in how women access and benefited from economic development especially because of their triple roles of production, reproduction and social. It was found that there is no consistent analysis of how government budgets are gender responsive or accountable. Therefore, a more comprehensive study of the impact of budgetary and social protection policy and practice on the women members is required.