The Theories And Practices Of Participatory Gender Budget

Gender budget experiences women budget period, global promotion period under the international organizations’ promotion, variety and in-depth development period. The germination and initial exploration of participatory gender budget emerged in the latter two phases. While Wenling’s participatory gender budget is an extension of local participatory budget, whose driving force derives from institutional innovation-driven within the system. The multiple subjects of gender budget can be summarized into three categories, namely civil society, government organizations, and international agencies. Academics, the National People’s Congress, the party committee and government, women’s federations, and deputies to the NPC and the grassroots constitute the main body of Wenling practice. Foreign scholars have put forward a series of strategic frameworks, whose internal system and structure includes: the three-category approach, the five-step approach, an Outcomes/Results Framework for Relating Budgets to Gender Equality, and the three stages of gender budgeting. And the operating mechanisms are interdependent between Wenling practice and local participatory budget. As it were, the former mechanism relies on the framework of the latter, which can be divided into three stages:budget of first instance before congress, deliberation and voting in the congress, and implementation and supervision after the congress. Foreign gender budget’s contents include budget expenditure and budget revenue. While Wenling practice only involves part of the budget expenditure, which can be attributed to three levels:budget expenditure specifically for women, budget expenditure more closely related to women, general budget expenditure. Drawing from foreign evaluation criteria and ideas and assessing Wenling practice, this thesis found that this innovative initiative, based on democratic deliberation, has achieved remarkable fruits. Viewed from an international perspective, there are still many inadequacies in this practice. Thus, this thesis proposes to achieve the diversity of its main body and improve its reviewers’ representation and professional competency, as well as to perfect the cycle of participatory gender budget. Besides, it also put forwards to extend its content and take full advantages of the deliberation outcome.