Gender-based Budgeting for 2024: More Tokenism or True Commitment?

Abstract

With the committee stage debates on Budget 2024 still ongoing, our interest has been piqued by a term that has gained relatively little attention since it was mentioned in the Budget Speech presented on 13 November 2023: Gender-based budgeting. Gender-based budgeting or Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB) makes sense, from a social justice perspective and a sustainable growth perspective. However, given the government’s track record with GRB, those of us looking for more than a token reference are likely to be disappointed. However, GRB needs to be on the government’s agenda for 2024, and the government now needs to go beyond paying lip service to GRB.