Download Report

Advancing Tax Justice through Human Rights
International Strategy Meeting
April 29-30, 2015 | Lima, Peru
Session 4.D. Participatory and gender-responsive budgeting: linking tax policy to public
service investment
Facilitator: Teresa Marshall, GATJ
Commentators:
• Diego de la Mora, FUNDAR
• Fabián Carrillo, Grupo Faro Ecuador
• Ana Inés Abelenda, AWID
• Rosa Emilia Salamanca, CIASE
Background
The public budget expresses society’s priorities like few other instruments. Who it raises
money from, and what it spends this money on, has fundamental effects on the realization
of human rights. This session will discuss how the specific tool of participatory budgeting
can reverse inequalities of all kinds, in particular gender inequalities.
The growing misuse of tax cuts, combined with austerity and privatization measures, is
undercutting women’s progress toward economic and social equality. The resulting drop in
tax revenues is used to justify cutting vital public services, jobs, and sustainable development
funds. Around the world, the tax burden is being shifted from progressive taxes on
corporate income to regressive consumption taxes (VAT/TVA) paid by common people.
Women, particularly poor and indigenous women, are paying the heaviest price for these
misguided policies. Under austerity measures, women are losing jobs in both the private and
public sectors. This has an immediate effect on household income, and a much longer term
effect on the role of women in the labor force. As women form a large proportion of public
sector workforces, they feel the impact of public sector job cuts most acutely. Many women
are being forced to abandon their position in the labor force or move into the private or
informal sector. The reduction in public services affects women’s access to health, education
and social care. A loss of services also affects women in caring roles, increasing the already
high rates of unpaid care.
The extensive changes in government services are affecting women as public sector workers,
benefit recipients and service users. Despite the introduction of equality legislation,
government austerity measures have not been informed by an awareness of their impact on
women. More research is needed to measure the impact on women as public sector workers
and service users. After several decades of rising female participation in the formal labor
market, the next decade could see a decline in the role of women in the workforce,
accompanied by a loss of rights and a reduction in women’s influence on a wide range of
decisions.
There is a continued need to measure how the economic crisis and the cuts in government
spending are affecting women and their families. As governments have been reluctant to use
gender impact assessments to assess austerity measures, there must be an increase in political
will to collect and analyze data. Human rights, trade unions and other civil society
organizations must campaign for the needed research and analysis to be done, as well as
undertake it themselves. Equality institutions and organizations have been damaged by cuts.
New investments in equality structures are required.
Women scholars, activists and elected representatives have done much to try to transform
government budgets in the years since the Beijing Platform for Action called for genderresponsive budgeting. There have been some successes in promoting women’s voices, and in
re-orienting public finance to address women’s poverty and gender equality. Women have
increased their voice in participatory budgeting, pioneered in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil,
and adopted in many other cities in Latin America and Europe. An Indonesian NGO the
Women’s Research Institute has promoted the application of gender-responsive budgeting
to maternal health services at the provincial and district levels. For example, in South
Lombok [budgets were increased after] they concluded that maternal health services could
be improved if more resources were allocated to the salaries of midwives (as opposed to
doctors) and the purchase of motorbikes and sterile equipment for midwives (instead of
ambulances and buildings). In Cuenca, Ecuador, gender-responsive budgeting led to
earmarking of resources in the city budget for its Equal Opportunity Plan and guidelines to
promote the hiring of more women on city investment projects. Parliamentarians in Uganda
have looked at budgets from the perspective of poor women, assisted by briefings produced
by the Ugandan women’s budget group Forum for Women in Democracy. In Tanzania, the
Ministry of Water was one of six ministries included in the first phase of institutionalising
gender analysis in budget processes, in collaboration with the women’s organization
Tanzania Gender Networking Programme. As a result, poverty and gender issues were
included in the guidelines for the water sector budget, and the water budget was also
increased. In Australia, gender-responsive budgeting was given renewed emphasis in 2009.
Low income working women and their children are major beneficiaries of the federal
government’s 2009/10 budgetary commitment to introduce a national parental leave scheme
in January 2011. The South African Women’s Budget Initiative, a collaboration of
parliamentarians and researchers, successfully argued for a change in Value Added Tax on
paraffin. Much of the impact of gender-responsive budgeting has been at the local and
regional level, or on specific taxes and public services, but there has been impact on the
overall budget process in some countries such as Bangladesh.
Framing questions:
•
•
What are some specific examples and results of participatory and gender-responsive
budgeting on the tax and the spending side? How have they improved results?
What are some specific ways we can achieve gender justice through budget justice?
What changes would be necessary to make the tax system a force for gender and
economic equality?
•
•
•
•
What are the different ways in which tax policies can actively tackle inequalities
(especially economic and gender inequalities) – for example through resourcing
public services, redistributing income/wealth and repricing certain goods or
activities?
To what degree can participatory budgeting improve the progressivity of the tax
regime?
In what ways can human rights standards and human rights mechanisms be used and
leveraged at national and international levels to achieve more participatory and just
budgets?
What are the main challenges and opportunities for collaboration across tax, budget
and human rights communities?