This volume contains seven chapters that consider how fiscal policies can address women’s and girls’ disadvantages in education, health, employment, and financial well-being. Researchers from a joint collaboration between the International Monetary Fund and the UK’s Department for International Development presented papers at a 2016 international conference on gender budgeting at the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, DC, and detail the findings of their work here, which draws on published materials, a questionnaire sent to ministries of finance to all International Monetary Fund member countries, and interviews with country officials and international organizations that offer technical assistance to countries seeking to implement gender budgeting. They describe key gender budgeting efforts planning, allocating, and monitoring government expenditures and taxes to address gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Canada, the Middle East and Central Asia, and the Pacific Islands and Caribbean.

Historically, women around the world have had less opportunity than men in education, employment, and health care, and less political representation. The moral argument for gender equality is clear, and the economic evidence is mounting. The International Monetary Fund and other international institutions have focused in recent years on developing a range of approaches to help whittle away at the barriers that prevent girls and women from achieving their full economic potential. This book is based on a joint research project between the IMF and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development on gender budgeting around the world. The book summarizes some of the most prominent gender budgeting efforts in more than 80 countries tried over the last two decades. The research team relied on published materials, developed a questionnaire sent to the ministries of finance of all 189 IMF member countries, and conducted interviews with country officials and international organizations that offer technical assistance to countries seeking to implement gender budgeting. Although the gender gap is shrinking, progress remains uneven across many regions of the world. Gender budgeting allows fiscal authorities to ensure that tax spending and policies address inequality and the advancement of women in areas such as education, health, and economic empowerment. Gender budgeting has been targeted to a variety of goals such as access to education, childcare, and health services; raising female labor force participation; and eradicating violence against women. There are still many lessons to be learned in implementing the appropriate government policies and fiscal measures to continue promoting women’s development and gender equality.

This book examines how fiscal policy and management can promote gender equality in developing as well as developed countries. Providing an international look at gender budgeting, it draws on countries at different levels of development, with an emphasis on low-income developing countries. It introduces the reader to the main trends in gender equality, the key ideas and rationale of gender budgeting from a fiscal policy perspective and where gender budgeting fits into public financial management. It offers case studies and other empirical evidence from developing, emerging, and developed countries on what works in using fiscal policy and public financial management to narrow gender gaps in education, health care, access to infrastructure, and economic empowerment. It also provides policy recommendations appropriate to countries at different levels of development. The reader will gain an understanding of how fiscal policy and public financial management can contribute to gender equality and women’s advancement. The book provides a well-grounded set of conclusions and policy recommendations, drawn from evaluation of the evidence. The focus is on low-income developing countries but is combined with a well-rounded look at developing countries, more generally, emerging markets, and developed countries as well. This book will be a valuable resource for economists and policy makers, particularly those in developing countries still grappling with large disparities between women and men. It will also prove useful to researchers and those who provide technical assistance and aid to countries on fiscal policies and tools for gender equality.

Would countercyclical fiscal policy during recessions improve or worsen the gender employment gap? We give an answer to this question by exploring the state-dependent impact of fiscal spending shocks on employment by gender in the G-7 countries. Using the local projection method, we find that, during recessions, a positive spending shock of 1 percent of GDP would, on average, lift female employment by 1 percent, while increasing male employment by 0.6 percent. Consequently such a shock would improve the female share of employment by 0.28 percentage point during recessions. Our findings are driven by disproportionate employment changes in female-friendly industries, occupations, and part-time jobs in response to fiscal spending shocks. The analysis suggests that fiscal stimulus, particularly during recessions, could achieve the twin objectives of supporting aggregate demand and improving gender gaps.

This book examines how macro-fiscal policy can lead to gender-aware human development in an emerging economy like India, with special reference to gender budgeting. Integrating gender lens in macro-fiscal policies has been widely recognized in international and national policy making and budgeting. The book highlights the gender diagnosis—the measurement issues relate to construction of gender outcome variables; the statistical invisibility of unpaid care economy sector and how deficiency in public infrastructure can accentuate the private costs; the analytical link between gender outcome variables and macro-fiscal policy frameworks; the role and impact of fiscal transfers on gender equality outcomes at subnational levels; time series of gender budgets in India across sectors and its fiscal marksmanship; gender disaggregated public expenditure benefit incidence analysis to understand the distributional impacts of public spending on women across income quintiles and suggest policy alternatives. The book uses unique database—time use survey data and the disaggregated demand for grants, expenditure budgets using gender lens. The book employs case study, simple statistical tools for the analysis and econometric methodology.

Historically, women around the world have had fewer opportunities than men in education, employment, health care, and politics. The moral argument for gender equality is clear, and the economic evidence is mounting. The International Monetary Fund and other international institutions have worked to help whittle away at the barriers that prevent girls and women from achieving their full economic potential. This book is based on a joint research project between the IMF and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development on gender budgeting around the world. The book summarizes prominent gender budgeting initiatives in more than 80 countries. Gender budgeting allows fiscal authorities to ensure that tax spending and policies address inequality and the advancement of women. Gender budgeting goals include increasing access to education, childcare, and health services; raising female labor force participation; and eradicating violence against women.

This volume takes a critical look at the gender of tax policy around the world. Contributors based in eight different countries examine the profound effects that gender norms and practices have had in shaping tax law and policy, and how taxation in turn impacts upon the possibilities for equality along gender, race, class, sexuality and other lines. Chapters explore how the gendered fiscal state might be theorised; how structural choices about rates and bases in tax policy design contribute to gender inequality; how tax policy affects family configurations and perceptions of what constitutes family; how fiscal systems impact on savings and wealth accumulation by women and men; and the role of different policy-making processes and institutions in occluding and sometimes challenging these patterns. Most significantly, perhaps, the book explores these questions in an international frame, traversing countries and continents. The conclusion: fiscal policy has deep rooted, long standing gender implications that affect virtually every aspect of our social, political, and economic lives whether we live in Canada, Australia or Kenya.

The sizeable increase in income inequality experienced in advanced economies and many parts of the world since the 1990s and the severe consequences of the global economic and financial crisis have brought distributional issues to the top of the policy agenda. The challenge for many governments is to address concerns over rising inequality while simultaneously promoting economic efficiency and more robust economic growth. The book delves into this discussion by analyzing fiscal policy and its link with inequality. Fiscal policy is the government’s most powerful tool for addressing inequality. It affects households ‘consumption directly (through taxes and transfers) and indirectly (via incentives for work and production and the provision of public goods and individual services such as education and health). An important message of the book is that growth and equity are not necessarily at odds; with the appropriate mix of policy instruments and careful policy design, countries can in many cases achieve better distributional outcomes and improve economic efficiency. Country studies (on the Netherlands, China, India, Republic of Congo, and Brazil) demonstrate the diversity of challenges across countries and their differing capacity to use fiscal policy for redistribution. The analysis presented in the book builds on and extends work done at the IMF, and also includes contributions from leading academics.

This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality. Despite recent progress, gender gaps remain across all stages of life, including before birth, and negatively impact health, education, and economic outcomes for women. The roadmap to gender equality has to rely on legal framework reforms, policies to promote equal access, and efforts to tackle entrenched social norms. These need to be set in the context of arising new trends such as digitalization, climate change, as well as shocks such as pandemics.

This paper is an excerpt from Inequality and Fiscal Policy. The sizeable increase in income inequality experienced in advanced economies and many parts of the world since the 1990s and the severe consequences of the global economic and financial crisis have brought issues on equity and distribution to the top of the policy agenda. The book delves into this discussion by analyzing fiscal policy and its link with inequality. Fiscal policy is the government’s most powerful tool for addressing inequality. It affects household consumption directly and indirectly. An important message of the book is that growth and equity are not necessarily at odds; with the appropriate mix of policy instruments and careful policy design, countries can in many cases achieve better distributional outcomes and improve economic efficiency. Country case studies demonstrate the diversity of challenges and the diverging ways to use fiscal policy for redistribution. The analysis presented in the book builds on work by IMF economists and leading academics.