KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This research report consists of three parts with an emphasis on the implementation and continuous development of gender budgeting at the national and local level. Part 1 focuses on evaluating and analyzing the implementation process of gender budgeting in the executive branch of government and the National Assembly so that we can recommend ways to establish the gender budgeting system as a stable part of the national fiscal system. Part 2 researches the current status of gender budget statements at the local level and analyzes their issues in the implementation process. Part 3 inspects the results in countries where gender budgeting is government-led and finds implications for improving the system. The following are the main findings of Part 1. First, we analyze and evaluate the enforcement process of gender budgeting in the executive branch of the government (Ⅱ). Second, we identify the deliberation process of the gender budget in the National Assembly and reveal its problems (Ⅲ). Third, based on the papers prepared by public officials who are in charge of drawing up the gender budget reports over the course of three years, we evaluate changes in the understanding and awareness of gender budgeting, which we then use to assess the results and identify ways to improve the gender budgeting process (Ⅳ). Among various policy tasks drawn from this research, the following take priority. First, we need to establish a medium-to-long term goal for the preparation process of gender budgeting and gender budget settlements in the executive branch of the government and we need to present specific guidelines for the deliberation process to enable departments to collectively select projects. For the execution process, we must create a systematic monitoring system and for the settlement and feedback process, implement stronger evaluation of gender budget settlements and develop systematic methods of managing performance. Secondly, to boost deliberative activities of the gender budgeting system, we need to strengthen the permanent deliberative function of the gender budgeting system and provide customized training, which may be helped along by creating a subcommittee that is involved in the deliberation process. In the deliberation process, it is also imperative to improve the deliberative function of the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts and strengthen indirect deliberative functions such as raising awareness among congressmen and soliciting participation. On top of that, for feedback methods, we should establish governance that revolves around the National Assembly, the executive branch of the government and civil society and enhance the role of civil society in the monitoring and surveillance of the system. Part 2 centers around analyzing the first gender budget statement drawn up at the local government level in 2013, then picking a particular region, of which we study the issues that appear in the criteria of selecting projects for the gender budget statement and the process itself, and finally, presenting ways to alleviate these problems. This research paper shows that we need a stricter standard for classifying compulsory and recommended projects and projects for specific genders, and a rigorous differentiation in selection criteria for projects that reflect the characteristics of individual local governments, and the precise establishment of each role that various organizations occupy in the process of selecting targeted projects. Also, we must create a system for gender budget statement consulting services and increase promotion in order to implement the gender budgeting system effectively. Part 3 analyzes the current state and recent accomplishments of government-led gender budgeting in 10 countries and tries to look for ways to improve Korea’s gender budgeting system, which has reached the settlement stage. The various policy tasks presented in this paper must facilitate the strengthening of capabilities of government officials and make use of experts. Furthermore, projects must be selected from a wider range of fields so that ‘gender equality’ is distinguished as a separate item in the national fiscal management plan. A comprehensive system must be put in place to execute the gender budgeting process and evaluate its performance afterwards. Finally, it is necessary to create indicators of peformance management by field in order to diversify these indicators and develop quantitative and qualitative indicators that measure gender equality.