Gender Transformative Budgeting: A Catalyst for Gender Equity in Nigeria

Yèyé Bunmi Dipo-Salami

​Nigeria has established legal and policy frameworks to promote gender equality, but their effective implementation is often hindered by significant inadequacies and critical gaps. This article explores how gender transformative budgeting (GTB) offers a powerful approach to overcome these challenges, ensuring that gender equity laws and policies translate into tangible improvements for women and girls across the nation. By fundamentally rethinking how public funds are raised and spent, GTB can be a catalyst for genuine and lasting change.

​The Landscape of Gender Equity in Nigeria: Progress and Persistent Gaps

​Nigeria's commitment to gender equity is evident in its legal and policy landscape, which includes the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act (VAPP Act) of 2015, and the National Gender Policy 2021-2026. However, the Constitution itself contains clauses that limit women’s rights, and the VAPP Act's protections are under threat. Despite policies, women remain severely underrepresented in political leadership, holding just 6.7% of elected official positions in recent general elections.

This glaring disparity is a significant barrier to creating and implementing gender-sensitive policies. ​Efforts like the current Reserved Seats Bill (HB 1349), which seeks to provide specific seats for women in the National and State Houses of Assembly, are crucial attempts to address this underrepresentation. As a "temporary special measure," the bill proposes creating an additional 37 Senate seats and 37 seats in the House of Representatives, exclusively for women. This initiative, reintroduced after a similar attempt failed in 2022, highlights the significant political hurdles that such efforts face. Inadequate resource allocation and weak enforcement mechanisms further widen the gap between policy intent and actual impact. These pervasive inadequacies in the existing frameworks underscore why gender transformative budgeting is not just important, but critical.

​Understanding Gender Transformative Budgeting

​While gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) primarily analyzes budgets to assess their differential impacts, gender transformative budgeting (GTB) goes a step further. It actively restructures public financial management to dismantle the structural inequalities that perpetuate gender disparities. GTB is not just about identifying biases in spending; it's about challenging power relations, redistributing resources, and transforming social norms and institutions to achieve substantive gender equality. It scrutinizes how revenue is generated, how money is spent, and how these fiscal decisions impact the unpaid care economy and the distribution of work between genders.

​How GTB Ensures Effective Implementation in Nigeria

​GTB offers several key mechanisms to strengthen the implementation of gender equity laws and policies in Nigeria, particularly by addressing the identified inadequacies:

​Strategic Resource Allocation

​GTB ensures that national and sub-national budgets are intentionally designed to allocate sufficient resources to programs that support gender equity laws. This includes funding for girls' education, women's health, anti-violence programs, and women's economic empowerment. Crucially, GTB can also allocate resources to actively promote women's political participation, including funding advocacy for the passage and effective implementation of the Reserved Seats Bill.

​Enhanced Transparency and Accountability

​By integrating a gender perspective throughout the budget cycle, GTB increases transparency in public spending. It demands clear reporting on how gender equality commitments are translated into budgetary allocations and expenditures, making it easier for civil society and the public to monitor spending and hold institutions accountable. When budgets specifically allocate funds for reserved seats or other gender quotas, transparency ensures these funds are used as intended.

​Data Collection and Analysis

​Effective GTB relies on the systematic collection and use of sex-disaggregated data. This data is crucial for informing budget decisions by identifying specific needs and gaps that require funding, and for tracking the outcomes of gender-focused interventions. This helps to analyze the effectiveness of policies like the Reserved Seats Bill by tracking women’s representation and its correlation with budgetary changes.

​Capacity Building

​Implementing GTB requires a significant investment in capacity building, including training policymakers and budget officers on gender analysis and budgeting techniques. This ensures that gender equity is not just a policy but a budgetary priority. This capacity building can extend to training women to effectively participate in legislative and governance processes if the Reserved Seats Bill is enacted.

​Participatory Budgeting

​A truly transformative approach necessitates the meaningful participation of women's groups and marginalized communities in the budgeting process. Engaging these stakeholders ensures that budgets reflect the practical and strategic needs of diverse women and girls. This bottom-up approach fosters ownership, improves the relevance of interventions, and strengthens the democratic process.

​Addressing Structural Barriers

​Beyond specific programs, GTB aims to tackle the structural barriers that underpin gender inequality, including the inadequacies of the legal framework and the lack of women's representation. By budgeting for initiatives that explicitly promote women's political participation, GTB can help address their underrepresentation and influence the reform of discriminatory laws. In turn, increased women's representation through such bills can lead to legislative bodies that are more likely to enact gender-transformative budgets.

​Benefits of GTB for Nigeria

​The effective implementation of GTB in Nigeria promises several key benefits:

​Accelerated Progress: It will accelerate progress towards national gender equality goals outlined in the National Gender Policy and international commitments like the Sustainable Development Goals.

​Improved Human Development: By targeting resources effectively, GTB can significantly improve indicators related to women's and girls' health, education, economic participation, and safety.

​Economic Growth: Empowering women economically and reducing barriers to their participation can unlock significant economic potential, contributing to national growth and poverty reduction.

​Enhanced Governance: GTB fosters a more transparent, accountable, and responsive government, aligning public spending with citizen needs and human rights principles, and ensuring women's voices are heard in budgetary decision-making.

​Conclusion

​Gender transformative budgeting offers Nigeria a robust pathway to translate its gender equity laws and policies into practice, critically addressing their current inadequacies and bolstering women's political representation. By consciously allocating resources to tackle the root causes of inequality, enhancing transparency, and fostering inclusive participation, GTB can dismantle systemic barriers and create an environment where women and girls can truly thrive. Embracing this approach is not just a fiscal reform; it is a fundamental step towards building a more just, equitable, and prosperous Nigeria for all its citizens.

​References:

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