'Mainstreaming'. What does that mean then? Not quite as ubiquitous as 'priority', but a very well-used term in any case. But what does it mean? Well, it's obvious i'n'it? It means ... err ... becoming part of everyday normal (mainstream) business. Good. But ... err ... what does that mean?
A candidate for Room 101? ... I think maybe not.
For my first witness I (re)call a question I was recently asked .... 'how can one better link up PFM initiatives with Gender Responsive Budgeting initiatives?' (Gender Responsive Budgeting, by the way, like Edward Samuel "Ed" Miliband, is more commonly referred to by a diminutive - "GRB" in this case.) The question, however, could have been phrased 'how can one mainstream gender in the PFM system?' The evidence I presented in response to this question (and, now, in order to rescue 'mainstreaming' from Room 101) is as follows ...
I guess the answer to your question really comes down to what one’s expectations of GRB initiatives are and/or what specific GRB initiatives one has in mind.
It is probably worth thinking about the question in relation to each stage of the PFM cycle ... which raises a prior question - what (and how many) ‘stages’ does one have in mind in this statement? I am sure you are aware that the PFM cycle can be broken down into any number of stages, depending on the level of detail one is considering.
A common approach is to consider the cycle in six stages: Policy Design; Strategic Planning; Budget Preparation; Budget Execution; Accounting/ Reporting; Audit. Questions of GRB can be considered at each of these stages. Whilst all would link together, the focus at each stage would be different.
Among other things, considering how one might approach GRB at each of these stages may provide an opportunity to reconcile apparently very different views about what GRB is and/or ought to be. For example, reconciling the desire of a UNIFEM consultant I once met to publish each budget figure in terms of planned spending on males and planned spending on females with a Budget Director’s desire for ministries to specify programme outputs and objectives that deliver needed services to females (or any other marginalised groups, including groups of males in some circumstances I imagine).
I am presuming overall that the name of the GRB game is to reduce and eventually to remove discrimination (whether explicit, implicit, inherently cultural or otherwise) against females in the provision of public services, with a wider aim of enhancing the status of females and the participation by females in all aspects of society to the point (eventually) of equality with males (however one defines equality in the detail that one would require to make such a statement meaningful of course).
Policy Design. Being clear with regard to the ambition of policy achievement should be the starting point to any PFM discussion. To my mind, understanding in practice when public services deliver benefits to females (or to specific groups of females) relative to males has much less meaning in the absence of policy clarity - i.e. what are the specific policy areas that a government has set out desired gender-responsive achievements for. From our own experience in the UK one can think of many examples of reasonably clear policy aims, including for example: reducing domestic violence against women (hopefully with much less vagueness than this statement might otherwise suggest); ensuring equal pay for equal work by a given date (or ensuring equal pay applies once the status has been established); opening workplace opportunities to a higher proportion of working mothers (though, interestingly, my wife takes the view that families should be pressured to consume less and women with young children be exposed to less peer-pressure to return to the workplace early as a result - I should note that I am very much agnostic on this issue); and so on.
Strategic Planning. Once policy goals have been established these can become quickly meaningless in practice without consideration of how the design of public services (including setting out revised legislative and procedural arrangements) should be organised over time to ensure that policy can be achieved. This is where sector strategies can play an important role (at least in those cases where such strategies are genuinely prepared with a view to organising the delivery of public services over time, including working with and influencing partners, rather than as a 'box ticking' exercise to please a donor, as is so often the case). I noted in our conversation last week my view that sector strategies are more often statements of good intentions than they are genuinely costed and planned means to achieve what those intentions represent. Nevertheless, they can contain a series of gender-responsive Strategic Objectives (i.e. outcome-type statements that rely on the work of one or more programmes and that usually rely on working also with partners outside of government and are influenced by that inconvenience known as uncertainty - the world economy, the weather and a host of other whims outside the control of someone planning the delivery of public services). Some real sector strategy examples include 'Increase women’s participation in the labour force'; 'Reduce violence (all kinds) against women'; 'Increase women’s participation in decision-making'; 'Enhance women’s access to public services'; 'Mainstream gender issues in regular work of ministries'. This part of the PFM cycle is potentially very powerful in ensuring that the fundamental aims of GRB are achieved. It is also true, however, that I have seen many more weak and/or box-ticking sector strategies than I have strategies that are just that - strategic, well prepared and linked in terms of cost or process to a budget.
Budget Preparation. This is often where much of the GRB focus is, of course, and where some of the misunderstanding of what GRB can and should be occurs. To my mind, the important bits of the story are simple and straightforward. If policy is reasonably clear and if there is a reasonably good sector strategy that describes how public services should be organised over time (including working with partners and doing what may be possible to manage uncertainty), the budget should then specify outputs in key service delivery areas (which may be thought of as programmes, whether there is a programme budget approach or not) to ensure the achievement of those bits of policy identified as achievable in the budget year in question. Should there be a programme budgeting approach, the language one might use is that programme outputs (including the level to which they should be delivered) for the year in question should be specified to ensure the achievement of programme policy objectives for the same year. Where some of these outputs are gender-specific, it should indeed be possible to identify the level of budget appropriation that links to these gender-specific parts of the budget (if, as we discussed last week, the PB approach uses output-specification as a means to plan budget allocations …. if the PB approach is simply ‘information’ on outputs without a link to the budget, identifying gender-specific expenditure plans for such outputs would not be possible. There will, of course, be many other outputs, the delivery of which will benefit both females and males (whether equally or unequally) - examples would include: street furniture; rehabilitated (co-educational) classrooms; police patrols; delivery of piped water. In some cases it may be possible to set up (costly) information-gathering and research exercises to estimate the relative consumption of such public services by females and males respectively (they are usually referred to as benefit-incidence analyses). The important point, however, is to understand what outputs have been planned, which of those outputs address specific gender-responsive issues of relevance and whether such outputs have been appropriately resourced for the corresponding programme policy objectives to be achieved. Any suggestion that the entire budget should show a dissaggregation of spending on females and males is not only entirely impractical, it misses the important point of focussing on the planning and resourcing of specific outputs that link backwards to strategy and policy that seek to improve the status and participation of females in society.
Budget execution. The issue here is in some ways a very straightforward (technical) issue with a potentially important caveat. It is clearly the case that a well-planned and gender-responsive budget will be ineffective in achieving specified GRB aims if it is not implemented as planned. There are many reasons why a budget may not be executed as planned, including: ineffective planning in the first place; absence of cash planning, ineffective commitment controls (or other aspects of a normal pre-audit process); macroeconomic ‘shock’ and so on. So, the key to ensuring an effective GRB at this stage of the PFM cycle is less about gender-specific things and much more to do with ensuring the effectiveness of the ‘plumbing’ associated with budget execution. Having noted this, it remains the case that a Ministry of Finance (and/or and line ministry) can still make choices in the face of some of the things that can go wrong in budget execution (e.g. when expenditure must be reduced as a result of revenue under-performance). To ensure that such choices can be made (e.g. switch resources into particular outputs and/or programmes from other outputs/programmes), however, requires effective monitoring and reporting of expenditure and also of output delivery. Ensuring that these systems are (or can be) put in place would then become potentially important components of a GRB.
Accounting/Reporting. As noted above, accounting and reporting are key in understanding progress in delivery of particular outputs during budget execution. Likewise, once the budget year is over it is important to understand whether outputs (including GRB) outputs have been delivered as planned and, of course, whether the planned budget for such outputs has translated into expenditure on those outputs. To a large extent this comes down to a technical question with regard to the quality of the accounting and reporting tools. As noted above with regard to budget planning, whilst it is clearly tempting for some working on GRB to advocate for a complete gender breakdown of expenditure, in practice this is not possible to achieve in its entirety and would be potentially very costly to attempt. As noted above also, the point of importance with regard to reporting from a GRB perspective, is that those outputs that are of particular importance to key aspects of gender-responsive strategic objectives and policies are adequately reported (physical delivery and expenditure in practice).
Audit. This part of the PFM cycle essentially asks whether the accounts as presented to the external auditor represent a true and fair reflection of the corresponding public sector finances over the period. Coverage will depend on a range of factors, including accounting standard (e.g. cash, modified cash, accrual). In some cases the audit will cover the accuracy and probity of transactions, in other cases it will also cover the quality of systems and value for money. An auditor can (and often is) asked to focus on particular components of the accounts and the effectiveness and value for money of particular areas of expenditure. If there are areas of concern in terms of the quality, accuracy, fairness or value for money of what reports say about spending on particular gender-responsive outputs, one of the obvious actions would be to request the auditor to prepare a dedicated report on this area of the accounts.
