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This indicator measures three important components of a gender-responsive public finance system: (1) intent of a government to address gender equality by identifying whether policies, programmes and resources are in place; (2) existence of mechanisms to track resource allocations towards these policy goals; and (3) existence of mechanisms to make resource allocations publicly available to increase accountability to women.

This indicator seeks to measure government efforts to track budget allocations for gender equality throughout the public finance management cycle and to make these publicly available. This is an indicator of characteristics of the fiscal system. It is not an indicator of quantity or quality of finance allocated for gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE). The indicator measures three criteria. The first focuses on the intent of a government to address GEWE by identifying if it has programs/policies and resource allocations to foster GEWE. The second assesses if a government has planning and budget tools to track resources for GEWE throughout the public financial management cycle. The third focuses on transparency by identifying if a government has provisions to make allocations for GEWE publicly available. The indicator aims to encourage national governments to develop appropriate budget tracking and monitoring systems and commit to making information about allocations for gender equality readily available to the public.

Women's Department

Women's Department

Annual

Percentage (%)

This indicator will measure the percentage of governments with systems to track and make public resource allocations for gender equality. It builds on Indicator 8 of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation that has been piloted, tested and rolled out in 81 countries. Indicator 8 allowed, for the first time, the systematic collection of data on government efforts to track resource allocations for gender equality across countries. Indicator 5.c.1 is defined in almost identical terms to Indicator 8 of the GPEDC. In addition, Indicator 5.c.1 is the only indicator in the SDG monitoring framework that links national budgeting systems with implementation of legislation and policies for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

“Programs or policies of the government, that are designed to address well-identified gender equality goals” can be defined as:

1. Programs or policies that specifically target only women and/or girls. For example, a government program that provides scholarships for girls only, or a prenatal care program, or a National Action Plan on Gender Equality; or
2. Programs or policies that target both women or girls and men or boys and have gender equality as the primary objective. For example, a national public information campaign against gender violence, or on-the-job training programs on gender equality; or
3. Programs or policies where gender equality is not the primary objective, but the program includes action to close gender gaps. These programs could include provision of infrastructure, public services and social protection. For example, an infrastructure program that has a provision for using women labour, or a public transportation program that takes into consideration the mobility needs of women in its design.

“Programs or policies have adequate resources allocated within the budget, sufficient to meet both their general objectives and their gender equality goals” can be defined as:

1. The programs or policies that are designed to address well-identified gender equality goals are allocated sufficient resources to cover the costs of meeting those goals from funding that is included in the budget rather than from off-budget sources.

“Procedures in place to ensure that these resources are executed according to the budget” can be defined as:

1. There are procedures established in laws or regulations so that resources for programs or policies that are designed to address well-identified gender equality goals are executed as specified in the budget or if there are deviations in the exercise from the budgeted allocations, government agencies must justify to a supervising entity (e.g. ministries of finance, parliaments, audit bodies, or other relevant authorities) the reason for not executing resources according to budget.

 “Call circulars” can be defined as:

1. Call circulars are the official notices that are issued by the Ministry of Finance or Budget Office in a country towards the beginning of each annual budget cycle. The circular instructs government agencies how they must submit their bids or demands for budget allocations for the coming year (in some countries the notice may have another name, such as budget guidelines or Treasury guidelines). It may inform each agency what its budget “ceiling” for the next fiscal year.

“Key programs and policies” can be defined as:

1. Programs or policies of the government, that are designed to address well-identified gender equality goals.

“Ex-ante gender impact assessment” can be defined as:

1. Assessing individual resource allocations, in advance of their inclusion in the budget, specifically for their impact on gender equality

In addition to reporting Indicator 5.c.1 as described above, the following two country classification global proportions will also be reported: ((Number of countries that approach approach requirements )×100)/(Total number of countries) Additional disaggregation by region as follows: ((Number of countries in region x with country classification y )×100)/(Total number of countries in region x) Where x refers to the region of analysis and y refers to the country classification based on the questionnaire.

The method of computation is as follows:

Indicator 5.c.1 = ((Number of countries that fully meet requirements )×100)/(Total number of countries)

This indicator can be used to link policies and legal requirements for gender equality with resource allocations for their implementation. By tracking resource allocations, governments introduce deliberate measures into the planning and budgeting cycle to meet their gender policy objectives such as eliminating gender-based violence or increasing women’s employment.

The indicator does not measure allocation of resources but the existence of mechanisms to track resource allocations and that make that information available publicly. This indictor does not provide data on the adequacy or quality of resource allocations.

All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.