This gender-budgeting toolkit aims to help those working with EU Funds better fit their programmes to gender equality goals, strategies and regulatory frameworks at European Union and Member States level.
Gender budgeting is a strategy to achieve gender equality through allocating public resources in a way that addresses the specific needs of women and men. It is a tool for gender mainstreaming, to which the EU has been committed since 1995. As the COVID-19 crisis has shown and the new ESI Funds programming period is being prepared, gender budgeting becomes more important than ever and can help ensure that EU Funds are gender-fair and leave no one behind.
Against this background, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has released a step-by-step toolkit to help those working with European Funds under shared management (from now on EU Funds) better fit their programmes to EU’s and national gender equality goals, strategies and regulatory frameworks. This toolkit is also in line with the EU’s new gender equality strategy, which highlights the need for EU Funds to support work-life balance measures. In particular, it has been tailor-made to support:
- Managing Authorities involved in EU Funds programming (at national and sub-national levels)
- Intermediate bodies implementing EU Funds projects (at national and sub-national levels)
- Gender equality bodies
- Staff working at the EU level in relation to EU Funds and/or gender equality (e.g. European Commission Directorate-General (DG) for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, DG for Regional and Urban Policy, and DG for Justice and Consumers), helping them implement the horizontal principle of gender equality.
The toolkit is a collection of eleven tools aimed to help users keep in mind the different needs of women and men and apply a gender budgeting approach throughout EU Funds process. For each of them, it highlights good practices from EU Member States and pinpoints links to relevant EU Funds regulations and provisions, helping users know how, why and where to apply the tool. Tools are as follows:
- Tool 1: Connecting the EU Funds with the EU’s regulatory framework on gender equality
- Tool 2: Analysing gender inequalities and gender needs at the national and sub-national levels
- Tool 3: Operationalising gender equality in policy objectives and specific objectives/measures
- Tool 4: Coordination and complementarities between the EU Funds to advance work-life balance
- Tool 5: Defining partnerships and multi-level governance
- Tool 6: Developing quantitative and qualitative indicators for advancing gender equality
- Tool 7: Defining gender-sensitive project selection criteria
- Tool 8: Tracking resource allocations for gender equality in the EU Funds
- Tool 9: Mainstreaming gender equality in project design
- Tool 10: Integrating a gender perspective in monitoring and evaluation processes
- Tool 11: Reporting on resource spending for gender equality in the EU Funds
EIGE’s gender budgeting toolkit is currently in English but will soon be available in 22 EU languages. It is available both as an online tool and in pdf format.
Further information:
- Toolkit for Gender Budgeting in EU Funds:
– Online version
–Pdf version
–Factsheet - EIGE news alert
