Gender Budgeting

/Annex 6 in PEFA 2021 Belgium Brussels Capital Region Report /

The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) supplementary framework for assessing gender responsive public financial management (GRPFM)—the PEFA GRPFM framework—is a set of supplementary indicators that builds on the PEFA framework to collect information on the degree to which a country’s public financial management (PFM) system addresses the government’s goals with regard to acknowledging different needs of men and women and promoting gender equality. The BCR has taken a few policy measures to promote gender equality. The ordonnance of 29 March 2012 requires ‘gender mainstreaming’ in the policies of the Brussels administration. The Decision of 14 July 2016 specifies the policy of gender mainstreaming to the financial management and requires integration of the gender dimension in the budget cycle. These policy directions are at the basis of three instruments to support gender equality via the budget cycle:

- Categorization of budget lines in three ‘gender categories’;

- The equal opportunity test (through the regulation of 4 October 2018 supplemented by the Decree of 22 November 2018);

- The annual Gender Note that is annexed to the Budget Documents since 2020. Based on these initiatives, the GOB PFM systems is rated on the nine GRPFM indicators of the assessment framework.

The PEFA 2021 Belgium BCR Gender Report is part of the PEFA 2021 Belgium Brussels Capital Region Report and could be found in Annex 6 of the Report.