Gender Responsive Budgeting Tool and Guide for Local Government
Economic and Social Justice | 08 Aug 22
At the local government level, this
has been done in order to promote the delivery, through the budget, of quality, affordable, and
gender-responsive public services, in particular social services such as clean and safe water, good
sanitation, and health services. Some significant steps have been made in institutionalising gender
budgeting in local government. The Ministry of Local Government has not only adopted the local
government gender budgeting training manual developed by ZWRCN in 2012 but also issued a call
circular in 2011 (Local Government Circular No.3 of 2011) requiring all local governments to
mainstream gender in their operations, including budgets. The Ministry has also consistently
included a gender mainstreaming budget line. There are, however, still gaps in budgetary
commitments, allocations, and disbursements as reviewed by gender analysis of previous budgets.
ZWRCN shall continue to work with the relevant stakeholders to close these gaps.
In order to continue to build the capacity of local government technocrats to accelerate gender
mainstreaming in the planning and budgeting process, this toolkit has been developed to support
their daily work and assignments. The content was developed with the technical backstopping of Arina
Manyanya, Gender Focal Person in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development. The Toolkit
was pretested with officials in the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works, and National
Housing.