Abstract
Research on the actual conditions of the management of gender budgeting targeted programs and improvement measures
Hyo-Joo Kim
Byeong-Kwon Kim
Hae-Ram Kim
Gender budgeting has the objective of introducing gender sensitive concepts and principles to the management of the government budget in order to improve gender equality at the national level. Therefore, it has two aspects to it; its characteristic as ‘a major system of government finance’ and as ‘an official response at the national level to the gender inequality issue.’
There are a large number of agents in this system all of whom have different values and benefit from it in different ways, who are interrelated in a complex manner. Thus, it is vital that the conflicts between them are minimized to reduce inefficiencies that occur in the management of the system. Taking this into consideration, under the current system of gender budgeting, only a portion of budgetary programs are selected as targeted programs.
In order to achieve its initial objective within such a limited scope, selecting appropriate targeted programs is an incredibly important matter. However, while the issue of targeted programs was a key subject of discussion even before gender budgeting was introduced, regrettably we have yet to find common ground.
What is the greatest obstacle to choosing suitable targeted programs and how will we decide on the policy direction? This research paper analyzes the actual conditions of the management of the overall targeted programs, starting from Fiscal Year 2010 when this system was introduced up to Fiscal Year 2016, to accurately diagnose the problems related to targeted programs, then present policy measures.
The results of an analysis based on precedent studies and the actual conditions of management reveal that there are problems related to targeted programs, which can be summarized into the following three. The first issue is about the selection criteria of targeted programs and the second about the selection system. The last issue is related to government officials' low capacity for targeted programs.
To improve these three issues, we suggest that we revamp the draft guidelines and detailed guidelines for gender budgeting and furthermore that we issue instructions about the ‘consultative body of gender budget and settlement-related departments’ in this research paper. It is possible to implement these policy measures in the short term.
The starting point to improving the effectiveness of gender budgeting is to resolve the problem of targeted programs. This has become more of a pressing matter due to the enforcement of the ‘Framework Act on Gender Equality’ along with the connection to the gender impact assessment system. We look forward with keenest anticipation that the policy measures proposed in this research paper will be utilized in a useful manner.
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