Governance, national planning and budgeting for gender equality
The issues
With the persistent mismatch between government policy and development outcomes for women, one of the most important areas in promoting good governance and accountability which has gained widespread acceptance worldwide is making public budget gender responsive. The Government of Bangladesh has introduced gender-responsive budgeting close to a decade ago. As of 2018, 43 ministries prepared gender-budgeting and 29% of national budget is allocated for GRB, however, despite its rapid adoption, systematic monitoring and evaluation of GRB initiatives, there continues to be a critical gap in Bangladesh. Also, the capacity of officials to effectively use GRB for mainstreaming gender across ministries and lack of sex disaggregated data seems to be one of the key challenges for proper institutionalization of GRB in the country.In Bangladesh, gaps in gender statistics can be categorized into three main reasons: there is weak policy space, legal and financial environment for the production of gender statistics, there is limited technical capacity of National Statistical System (NSS), particularly with regard to the collection of gender statistics and a confluence of limited data dissemination and communication capacities of NSS to utilize and advocate for gender statistics that lead to informed decisions, policy research, budgeting and monitoring of gender equality related results.
How we are making a difference
On an on-going basis, UN Women provides technical and capacity building support to the Government of Bangladesh to integrate Beijing Platform of Action, CEDAW and its Concluding Observations, Commission of the Status of Women recommendations and gender equality related commitments of the SDGs into the national legislation, national and sectoral planning and budgeting process. Some of the policy development that UN Women has supported include Women’s Development Policy and its Action Plan, 7th Five Year Plan, National Action plan for Preventing Violence Against Women and Children, draft Anti-Discrimination Act etc.