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Budget 2023 used a ‘gender lens’ for the first time – the result was a win for women

Public Policy / opinion
Budget 2023 used a ‘gender lens’ for the first time – the result was a win for women
Senior cabinet minister Megan Woods, Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins prepare to deliver the May 18 budget.
Senior cabinet minister Megan Woods, Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins prepare to deliver the May 18 budget. Getty Images

All the pre-budget talk of “bread and butter”, “no frills”, targeting and reprioritisation came with a sense of foreboding. History and research tell us that budgets in general – but particularly those hyper-focused on fiscal prudence – have different, often unequal impacts on women compared to men.

For those of us who have long advocated for applying a gender lens to the budget, however, those fears were misplaced. That’s because Budget 2023 included a gender budgeting “snapshot” – the first New Zealand budget to do so.

This is an important addition to the budget process. The aim is to secure the wellbeing of diverse groups of women, underline structural inequalities, and avoid unintended negative consequences of investment decisions.

Although gender budgeting is new for Aotearoa New Zealand, it has a long history elsewhere, including in Australia. More than 80 countries have trialled some form of gender budgeting, including over 20 OECD member states.

Indeed, the OECD, the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund view gender budgeting as critical to correcting resource disparities, closing gender gaps in pay and the labour market, and enhancing economic, fiscal and social outcomes.

Valuable first steps

There are many gender budgeting models. But best-practice examples apply a data-based gender perspective to all stages of the budget process, from design and analysis to implementation and evaluation.

The New Zealand government’s expanded pilot is not at that stage yet. But we witnessed some valuable first steps towards building a more inclusive budget system.

Treasury guidelines asked government agencies to analyse how budget proposals would enhance the wellbeing of Māori and Pacific people, children, the environment – and, explicitly for the first time, women and girls.

Fifteen agencies, supported by the Ministry for Women, used a gender budgeting toolkit to undertake this work. As a result, the budget contained specific initiatives for diverse groups of women. Investments often assumed to be “gender neutral” were assessed through this gender lens.

Balancing the books

Our analysis of previous “wellbeing” budgets has highlighted how the gender-segregated nature of the labour market, including unpaid care work, has meant the benefits of government investments often bypass women.

Women are underrepresented in the construction and technology sectors, for instance. They also rely heavily on affordable childcare to support their return to work after parental leave. They often have different transport needs to men, and may be affected differently by pandemics and natural disasters.

Without a gender perspective, new spending on transport and climate change mitigation is unlikely to be evenly shared.

Bringing gender into Budget 2023 overcame some of these inefficiencies. For example, gender analysis resulted in the digital technology package including NZ$26.6 million to help businesses address digital skills gaps, and increase women’s participation in the sector from 27% to 50% by 2030.

New funding for internships and cadetships as part of the Pacific Employment Action Plan will benefit women and is a valuable step towards addressing the Pacific gender pay gap.

Closing the gaps

Expanding the 20 hours early childhood education (ECE) subsidy to cover two-year-olds (it previously covered those aged three to five) was another win for women. This $1.2 billion investment reduces by 18 months the period between parental leave payments ending and government support for childcare starting.

Reduced fees and cost-of-living support for parents with children already enrolled in ECE are also signalled. This may expand women’s labour force participation and increase productivity.

The government also began to address the gender gap in retirement savings by matching KiwiSaver employer contributions for paid parental leave recipients. This contribution is conditional on a co-contribution by employees, so may be less accessible to the lowest income earners.

However, it represents an investment in, and acknowledgement of, the unpaid care work predominantly done by women. And it is an important step towards reducing one component of the “motherhood penalty”.

The gender analysis completed by transport agencies revealed women are more likely than men to rely on public transport, use it in off-peak hours and make multiple short journeys. Women, particularly Māori and Pacific women, are also less likely than men to have a driver’s licence, making them more dependent on public transport.

So the promise of free fares for under-13-year-olds and reduced prices for under-25s is valuable. But it doesn’t cover the full cost for high school students, or help address the safety concerns associated with using public transport at night.

A political dividend?

Gender analysis also matters for climate change and disaster recovery initiatives. For example, the University of Auckland’s 2021 International Social Survey Programme found more women than men reported experiencing extreme weather events in the past 12 months.

While the gender gap is not significant, this nevertheless reinforces the need to analyse the impact of climate disasters on diverse groups within regions.

Family violence and harm also increase during and following such events. The additional funding dedicated to eliminating family and sexual violence in the budget is welcome. But making gender analysis the norm across recovery packages will be essential for resilience plans as the impacts of climate change increase.

It’s possible this year’s gender budgeting snapshot will be read by naysayers as a “frill” or a “nice to have”. But in reality it will make New Zealand’s system of budgeting more effective, efficient and equitable. Ultimately, it makes good economic sense.

It might also help Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Māori retain enough of the women’s vote to swing this year’s general election in their favour come October.


The authors thank Eva Mountfort for her research assistance.The Conversation


Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland; Komathi Kolandai, Research Fellow, Public Policy Institute and COMPASS Research Centre, University of Auckland; Oluwakemi Igiebor, Research Fellow, Public Policy Institute, University of Auckland; Suzy Morrissey, Research Associate, Public Policy Institute, University of Auckland, and Victoria Woodman, Doctoral Candidate, Social Sciences, University of Auckland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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60 Comments

> Gender analysis also matters for climate change and disaster recovery initiatives. For example, the University of Auckland’s 2021 International Social Survey Programme found more women than men reported experiencing extreme weather events in the past 12 months.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

How can this possibly be said with a straight face? This article is utter rubbish.

 

Richard Hanania nailed it with this article: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace

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Why?

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The irony of this response considering the article I posted is beautiful. 

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Richard Hanania is the President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a Research Fellow at Defense Priorities. 

Haha just proclaim yourself Emperor of Reason.

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Likely to have something to do with the proportion of sole parents that are women vs those that are men.  My guess is women make up a larger proportion and hence may live in at-risk locations (with cheaper rents) in greater proportion than men.  Single men with no children have more choices with respect to accommodation. 

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Or, you know, its bogus as the majority of self-reported surveys are? I could equally as plausibly argue men have experienced more extreme climate conditions than women (work more outdoor jobs, more dangerous jobs, 85% of homeless people are men etc). But in both cases they are just post-hoc arguments for what is clearly a junk result as this was a survey conducted in NZ and used to justify policy in NZ.

It reminds me of the old joke headline:

"Earth is destroyed, women more affected."

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Still pretty good being a white dude though, right?

The biggest danger is feeling guilty or having your feelings hurt.

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Who needs to address the arguments when you have ad-hominem attacks, right? Or is intellectual discussion a "white dude' thing?

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* looks at life outcomes of white dudes compared to everyone else for the past few thousand years *

Yeah, hard to feel too bad for them. Set the rules, screwed it up anyway.

I blame the male tendency towards objective materialism. We now have a wealth of hard knowledge, with very little depth.

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Honestly Pa1nter, I hope you are just trolling and don't really have this deep-seated an inferiority complex. I'm not sure of your exact circumstances so won't presume but I have plenty of friends who are of non-caucasian backgrounds who are doing great and I'm sure you could be too. 

"There is no political solution to personal problems" and all that. 

All the best and good luck.

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Why are the only options trolling or inferiority complex?

I'm not a feminist, but it does seem like patriarchal society is a perilous thing. Maybe the guys need to take a break for a while.

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Do you mean the West when you refer to "patriarchal society"? The question concerning the reasons for Western hegemony is still open to debate however it is without doubt the best system for individual expression and rule of law on the planet. The patriarchs should be thanked for that or was it, perhaps, their better halves that made it so? The West generally didn't encourage arranged marriage for example. Democracy, anti slavery, women's rights, welfare states, property law and a ton of other stuff first emerged in the West. Not so perilous really. It is about time we moved away from being so obsessed with gender and ethnicity but that doesn't mean one gender needs to take a break for a while. I doubt we can afford to take such a big risk. We can all work on this together.

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Democracy, anti slavery, women's rights, welfare states, property law and a ton of other stuff first emerged in the West.

"Hey look mum, I cleaned up the mess I made!"

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I forgot that everything outside of Europe was paradise. 

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"varied" is probably more accurate.

The Bible, a book written by men, about a male god and his male son, only has rules for how to treat slaves. It doesn't say "don't have slaves".

Would a society constructed and led by women make children property?

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Probably. Study the true history of the Woman King.

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Not really a female derived system tho, is it?

Our most successful female politicians have generally had to have been fairly masculine, because the system is still strongly patriarchal. 

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My daughter informs me that a matriarchy would be hideous, a society ruled by "Karens". She's quite bitter about the suffragettes ruining her chances of living the life of an Emily Brontë character.

Anyway I thought the idea was human progression and not a game of pass the parcel where it's now the turn of another group to have dominance. Other countries look to the West for leadership whether they realise it or not and if they see that males are overly discriminated against they may well reject this path. However, the proof of the concept will be how much prosperity results from the changes.

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Where's the progression though? We found a way to incinerate most life on earth in a few hours, then congratulate ourselves for coming up with treaties about rules to go about it.

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I asked ChatGPT:

The West laid the foundation for the modern understanding and promotion of human rights.

Western societies continue to address issues such as systemic racism, socioeconomic inequalities, gender disparities, and the rights of marginalized communities.

Women's rights, civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, animal rights, indigenous people's rights, human rights in general..Medical ethics, treatment of prisoners, the mentally ill, more concern for soldier's lives. Quite a lot of progression toward a more humane and highly conscious society.

It occurs to me that this is a kind of silly discussion anyway because our laws will not allow discrimination based on race or gender and I cannot see that changing so you will not get your matriarchal society.

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Quite a lot of progression toward a more humane and highly conscious society.

Is it really though? Most of the examples you mentioned is an institution trying to atone itself. But it'll still try and civilize a savage goat herder using aerial remotely deployed depleted uranium munitions in the name of "freedom".

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Precision airstrikes are a more humane form of warfare for both sides. We are deeply conscious of the destructive power and seek to limit suffering unlike our foes who use suicide bombers to detonate inside markets or schools.

Western Civilization (Christendom) would have been overwhelmed by the extremely patriarchal Islamic invaders if Europe had adopted a matriarchal system back in the Middle Ages.

Seeking atonement is indicative of a higher consciousness and a desire to improve. Sigh, I suspect there will be no way to change your schoolgirlish notions although you are likely trolling.

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Precision airstrikes are a more humane form of warfare for both sides. We are deeply conscious of the destructive power and seek to limit suffering unlike our foes who use suicide bombers to detonate inside markets or schools.

This is one way to look at it. Another is a desire to have an extreme upper hand in ranged warfare. In the past, this allowed the West to overwhelm the majority of the rest of the planet, turn much of it on its head, and then when the West lacked the resources to retain said territories, wash their hands of it.

Much of this is obviously a theoretical debate, as have you have mentioned the likelihood of a firm matriarchy is zero to nill. But on the flipside, there's still a permissive level of thinking that promotes patriarchal logic or philosophy as somehow superior, but I look around at the world today, and history and general, and aren't so convinced.

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Democracy, anti slavery, women's rights, welfare states, property law and a ton of other stuff first emerged in the West.

Incorrect - although, I'm sure there has been a 'ton of other stuff' e.g. high-fructose corn starch, penicillin, moon cups...

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You could quibble the fine points of origins however ChatGPT has confirmed all my claims so I feel pretty confident about this. We are talking about implementation at a state or civilizational level with ongoing development.

Anti-Slavery - Greece, Rome but nothing serious until UK 18th century

Welfare State - Germany 

Democracy - Athens

Women's rights - US, NZ, Finland

Animal rights - UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, NZ

Gay rights - Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingom

Transgender rights - Sweden

Modern private property rights - England

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Hilarious

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Having been through the wringer on this front with Children and an ex, the courts have a lot to do with the sole parent disparity

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REPORTED experiencing extreme weather events, doesnt necessarrily mean women experienced more weather events than men , just they reported it . probably because they considered the effect on their children and wider family , whereas the men would tend to focus on the immediate effect, and ways to fix it . 

But of course the reason it was considered was because woman vote, and more of them vote Labour / green . 

Hillary Clinton thought Trump couldn't win without woman , What she forgot was she couldn't win without men . When i saw her on the stage without a single man ,i got worried she was going to lose to Trump , and so it proved correct. 2 sides to playing with Gender. 

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If woman prime ministers here are anything to go by. they are all failures except maybe Helen Clark...

Mind you nationals deputy is good

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And Maggie Thatcher, you woulda loved old Maggie.

Basically so long as they act like a bloke, you're ok with women.

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Margaret Thatcher was very feminine. 

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A woman in her 70s (in the UK) found 18 gender options on a patient form. The paperwork also included "other" as an option for anyone who was not covered by the list. The form features the traditional male and female choices, but also offers a huge range of other options. These include passing, two-spirit, third gender, transgender, agender, bigender, cisgender, gender expression, gender fluid, gender queer and gender variant....the NHS suffered backlash for removing the word 'woman' from cancer and pregnancy web pages.... at least 19 female health pages on the website removed the term “woman”...The changes include pages on ovarian cancer, uterus cancer, menopause, childbirth and heavy periods.

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How can the budget possibly be targeted to improve outcomes for women when the PM can't even define what the word means?

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Did this article just assume my gender???

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Can't see how the budget used a "gender" lens. The prime minister of NZ doesn't even know what a woman is!

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I'm sure he knows what a woman is.  You try standing in front of the nation and declaring what a real woman is using traditional definitions.  You'd be receiving death threats from the 50 shades of gender brigade if you get it wrong, because that alongside misgendering someone is deemed "an act of violence" by this mob.  

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I don’t think there is a definition of any gender any more. The PM would be very brave to say anything. Well avoided really. 

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Maybe that's the definition of a woman . Those you would be very brave to say anything too.

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No I think that is the definition of not man. 

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Fifteen agencies, supported by the Ministry for Women, used a gender budgeting toolkit to undertake this work.

 What is this toolkit, what metrics does it use and what underlying bias does it hold? Or is it simply the name of a sanbox program that can be manipulated in order for said ministries to show whatever they wanted to show. I need answers to confirm the consistecy and integrity of this 'tool' as otherwise it will simply use 'wellbeing' as a metric and they'll use it however they wish.

and increase women’s participation in the sector from 27% to 50% by 2030

How will this be achieved? Will it be quotas in order to remove the meritocracy of the workplace? Or will they be funding programmes and initiatives to encourage more women into the sector? Any form of quota is unacceptable.

Women, particularly Māori and Pacific women, are also less likely than men to have a driver’s licence, making them more dependent on public transport.

Why is this? One cannot assume that there is an inherent cultural disadvantage without evidence to support that.

 

Overall there seems to be too many questions behind this lens, what defines it and how is it quantified. I find this article providing more questions than answers. Another example of decisions being made in government resulting in far reaching impacts while showing no transparency to the public they are supposed to govern.

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I’m a white male and I can’t really remember the last budget that did anything good for me. Probably the last tax cuts, around 2010 I think. So 12 budgets since have just scrambled lollies to everyone else. 

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Still top of the food chain, no assistance required 

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Yeah we're the evil clowns that throw the lollies.

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If everyone is equal why does anyone need assistance? 

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Because everyone doesn't have equal opportunities or an equal start in life

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Subsidies for <2 year olds at ECE is hardly a positive for society. Encouraging new Mums to dump babies and young toddlers into daycare is retrograde as far as the development of our next generation is concerned.

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Yep I’ve never understood why so many people have kids to then get someone else to bring them up. Between daycare and TV and devices, how much time do the parents spend with the kids?
At least make it an even playing field where those that stay at home with children get the subsidy too. 

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Depends there’s a lot of good parents out there. Then there’s a lot of parents who plop there kid in front of the t.v all day.

Daycare isn’t really a negative development. The times of the 80s & 90s when kids would play in the neighbourhood with each other are long gone. We live in a society of paranoia. If you don’t send your kid to daycare they will not not get the necessary social interaction they require at a young age. 

 

 

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NZ seems to be very concerned with early childhood education. I think it is a waste of resources personally. Germans don't start school until they are six. I suspect that the NZ government hopes it will help alleviate ethnic inequalities.

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Back in the 80s, our kids went to kohanga before kindy. My husband was their stay-at-home dad.  Best learning environment/experience for them ever

Hard to explain but nothing like ECE as it has now been commercialised.  

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School started in the UK at age 5. Society has gone backwards big time. The best childhood experiences are when the mother stays home and looks after the kids.

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Or father!  My husband was the most amazing stay-at-home Dad - and as we had two boys, I'm guessing they benefited from that big time. 

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Definitely, a good mate of mine is a stay-at-home dad and honestly much more suited to it than his wife would be (they have both acknowledged this as well). Sadly it seems like they will both have to work soon anyway due to price rises etc but it was working very well for them. 

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Single income families is a thing-of-the-past that modern societies need to focus on and work towards.  It's really not that long ago that they were the norm.  Seems to me the light-switch to dual-income went on following the neo-liberal era (post-1980s).  So, to my mind, smart governance ought to be able to reverse that trend.

Which is why I'm all for the way TOP is moving on tax and welfare.  First the move on tax - away from labour and onto to capital - and then the move to a UBI (which recognises and rewards un-paid work, i.e., childcare).

Hope your mate and his wife can stick it out as one income for a while longer!  Kids are only young once, after all :-).

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We put ours in at 18 months and felt bad. But there are like 6 month old babies in there and that just seems wrong. I cringed when I read about "labour force participation" and "productivity" in the article above.

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Because they are not thinking about the kid and only thinking about themselves.

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Is it not also encouraging new Dads to dump their babies and young toddlers?

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It is.

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