KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This paper consists of part 1 and part 2. Part 1 focuses on analyzing and evaluating ‘national gender budget statement & balance sheet’; Part 2 focuses on the implementing plans for gender budgeting system at local level. Here are main research findings of Part 1. First of all, '2010 Gender Budget Balance Sheet', '2012 Gender Budget Statement', and '2012 Gender-sensitive Fund Operating Plan' were collected in accordance with the allocation cycle of national budgeting system. After the structuralization of these data, empirical analysis was conducted. This was to evaluate how the effects of previous year’s government spending present differences by gender by examining trends that are reflected in the current year’s ‘gender budget statement’. In addition to this analysis, a survey was conducted to government officials who had completed the ‘gender budget statement & balance sheet’ this year in order to examine their understanding of gender budgeting system as well as to identify unresolved problems in the process of implementing the gender budgeting. The survey results provided several strategies for enhancing the system. Also, the analysis results gave an opportunity to develop the unique concepts of ‘gender budget statement & balance sheet’ given Korea’s own financial situation. There have been continuous discussions on the concept of gender budgeting system, yet the concept was often misinterpreted as gender budget analysis, gender budget impact evaluation, or gender impact evaluation. Through this research, we were able to provide an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the concept of gender budgeting system helping produce legally bounding documents, such as '2010 Gender Budget Statement', '2012 Gender Budget Balance Sheet' and '2010 Gender Budget Balance Sheet'. Based on the results of analysis on '2010 Gender Budget Balance Sheet', we found that government projects that directly target for “gender equality” had a tendency to have increased numbers of women recipients in their projects. Likewise, among 2011 government supported projects, “employment” related projects had increased rates of women recipients, while “security” related projects had lower rates of women recipients. Moreover, government officials tend to be more conservative on setting up the “outcome objective” in the ‘gender budget statement’ as they get more familiarzed with the gender budgeting system. Many of them stated that the criteria for selecting projects that are to be included in the ‘gender budget statement’ are rather inappropriate. Yet, after completing the ‘gender budget statement & balance sheet’, government officials have shown increased willingness and efforts to work for gender equality. Also, it was shared that there needs to be more agreement on the importance of the gender budgeting system among government officials and more gender segregated data available. Therefore, these suggestions can be made; it is necessary 1) to systemize the analysis process on ‘gender budget statement & balance sheet’ by creating guidelines and manual; 2) to enhance the status of gender budget system by supporting the preparation of ‘gender budget statement & balance sheet’ and designating an official analysis institution; and 3) to manage the projects that were included in the ‘gender budget statement’ in a in time-series manner accumulating the data on beneficiaries separated by gender. 
Here are main research findings of Part 2. Part 2 deals with the analysis of financial environment at local level and in other countries seeking for an appropriate framework and operational structure of gender budgeting system at local level. Local government budgets can be categorized into metropolitan council, municipality, borough and county, and the same structure applies to the gender budgeting. When implementing the gender budgeting system at the local level, the following issues need to be addressed, such as operational purpose, project summary, and gender equality analysis that are to be included in the ‘gender budget statement’. As the purpose of gender budgeting system is to reveal the ‘unintentional’ effects of budgets on differences by gender even though budgets seem to be gender-neutral. It is also required to develop the ‘gender budget statement’ which includes information about not only the scale of beneficiaries by gender but also budget area, budget sector, and the age of beneficiaries. Moreover, it is recommended that the central government should be responsible for the in-depth analysis, while local governments can take care of logistics in the implementing process. In fact, the transformation procedure is needed in a incremental way not as full-scale implementation. Therefore, it is suggested to start with the area where the gender of beneficiaries can be easily separated. In other words, the implementing process should begin with simplicity and evolve into a more completed format.