Gender sensitive budgeting: the case of Barbados

In 1997, Barbados joined the three countries (Sri Lanka, South Africa and Fiji) in the Commonwealth Secretariat Gender Budget Initiative. The Gender Budget Initiative in Barbados (herein after the pilot) was launched with an exploratory mission in June 1998; this was followed by a training seminar in April 1999. The report arising from the mission is currently being compiled and the results of this will be widely shared in Barbados, the region and at a seminar to be organized by the Commonwealth Secretariat in the year 2000. The implementation of a gender budget in Barbados has been met with some skepticism. There is tremendous controversy surrounding the meaning or interpretation of the term gender and even uncertainty surrounding the term gender budgets. For the purposed of the pilot project in Barbados, ‘gender affairs’ is described as a framework that examines the interrelations between men, women, boys and girls. A gender budget is a tool of analysis in which the government budget is dis-aggregated and the effect expenditure and revenue policies on the abovementioned groups is analyzed. Most people are of the view that the budget is a gender-neutral budget but upon close examination, some serious gender biases are revealed. This paper seeks to achieve a few goals. Firstly, it summarizes how the initiative was launched in Barbados, detailing the steps taken, the successful approaches taken as well as the institutional constraints. Secondly, an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the initiatives in terms of the greater accountability, both with the government and Civil Society. Within this analysis there is some account for the relative acceptance of the pilot in Barbados. Thirdly, the paper locates the Barbados experience, in a comparative way, in the context of similar exercises with which Barbados is familiar, and finally it outlines the prospects for sustainability of the projects in Barbados.