[ CASE STUDY 01 ]
Co-authoring Parliament's Gender Responsive & Inclusive Budgeting Guidelines
Practical guidance to help Parliament test whether taxes and public spending reach women, youth and low-income households, and tools to track it across the budget cycle.
02Chapters drafted
5-stepMainstreaming approach
CreditedIn the published Guidelines[ the challenge ]
Budgets are never neutral
Tax rules and spending decisions land differently on different people. A flat levy that is easy for a large firm to absorb can take a real share of a market trader's income. Parliament needed guidance that would let Members and staff see those differences, and act on them, at every stage of the budget.
[ what I did ]
Two chapters, from analysis to tools
As a member of the Parliamentary Research Services technical team, I drafted two of the Guidelines' chapters:
- Chapter Three: Budget Process and Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Taxation. It analyses how turnover tax and flat county levies burden women- and youth-owned micro-enterprises and low-income households, and recommends progressive thresholds, simplified compliance and enterprise support.
- Chapter Four: Approaches for Mainstreaming Gender and Inclusivity across the Budget Cycle. It sets out a five-step approach and practical tools, including budget tagging and disaggregated indicators, for tracking whether public resources reach targeted groups.
[ the outcome ]
Published, and in use
The Guidelines were published by Parliament, and the technical team, including me, is formally acknowledged in them. They give committees a shared method for asking a simple question of any budget line: who does this money actually reach?
[ FROM THE FIELD ]