On 2 September, the third webinar in a series of events for 13 partner hromadas of the Polaris Programme within the “Locally-led Recovery” direction was held, dedicated to the topic of gender-responsive budgeting. The theme was symbolic — “The Budget Process in the Service of Fair Community Recovery.”
This focus has also been recognised internationally: at the recent Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome, emphasis was placed on the importance of systematically applying a gender perspective to recovery processes. Inclusivity is the cornerstone of sustainable and fair rebuilding, and the engagement of women, youth, people with disabilities, older people, and other vulnerable groups in recovery is critically important.
During the webinar, trainer Yuliia Savielieva presented practical tools for gender-responsive budgeting and demonstrated how they can be applied in hromadas. Among the issues discussed were:
- how the budget is linked to equality and inclusion;
- what fair distribution of resources means;
- how each stage of the budget process can become gender-sensitive;
- and whether money has a “gender.”
Participants learned how to integrate a gender perspective into budget planning and execution, which indicators to use for evaluating effectiveness, and why it is important to collect and analyse gender-sensitive data.
“The budget is not only about numbers but, above all, about people. Gender-responsive budgeting helps identify in whose interests funds are being spent and makes this distribution fairer and more inclusive,” emphasised Polaris gender expert Yuliia Savielieva.
The session was practice-oriented, enabling participants to apply the acquired knowledge and examples in their own hromadas.
As a result of the meeting, hromadas identified the topic of the next webinar, which will focus on deepening the understanding of effective financing of community infrastructure projects through a gender lens.
