Blog Post
Empowering Change Through Gender Responsive Budgeting in South Africa
WBG's Training and Learning Team share their reflections from meeting local partners in Cape Town to share learnings on Gender Responsive Budgeting.
In 1995, the South African Women’s Budget Initiative began groundbreaking work on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) to reshape resource allocation in the post-apartheid 1 . South Africa became one of the first countries in the world to implement GRB and was seen as a pioneer with a promising start. Yet, despite the potential, progress has fallen short of expectations. Change has been slow and delayed by a lack of institutional commitment and funding, as well as the absence of intergenerational transfer of knowledge and skills
However, in recent years, South Africa has shown rapid progression in its commitment to GRB. This has included a constitutional commitment including the introduction of the Gender Responsive Budgeting Framework in 2019 followed by another one in 2022, along with the support of influential figures dedicated to advancing GRB.
As part of this work, WBG’s Training and Learning Hub were invited to the Western Cape Province. This was an opportunity for a two-way exchange, allowing WBG to learn from the unique South African context as well as sharing our own learning from work in the UK and internationally. We took part in three sessions with local partners.
Session one: Uncovering Women’s Stories with the Housing Assembly
Our first session with the Housing Assembly brought together a group of brilliant activist women dedicated to tackling housing inequality across South Africa. The session explored alternative ways to discuss the systemic housing inequalities affecting low-income Black and women of mixed heritage through GRB and, more importantly, to learn from these women.
From this session, we uncovered important stories and individuals such as Bernie. She has been collecting data by herself on women, housing wait times and the lack of housing in the Western Cape province. Another one was Auntie Grace from Cape Town.
“She was a valued member of her community, living comfortably in her pension years with the help of her son’s job. Wanting to give back, her son bought her a large cooking pot so she could prepare meals for her neighbours. For a time, she provided food and care, supported by their income. However, when her son lost his job, the extra income that allowed her to continue her community work disappeared. She could no longer provide for her neighbours in the same way, leaving a void in the care she had offered so lovingly.”
Auntie Grace’s story revolved back to an issue we continuously aim to address at WBG, unpaid care work and the ways it goes unnoticed. Together with the distribution of resources, this is a central issue in GRB. This story also reinforced the significance of Bernie’s data collection as it highlights the systemic issues affecting women like Auntie Grace and the urgent need to address gaps in housing and support systems for community care as well as the importance of citizen-generated data. We learnt from their stories how data, community support, and the recognition of unpaid labour that women provide are all deeply connected. Again, this was reflected in the government’s lack of responsiveness to different families’ needs when providing housing, such as ensuring that the size of the home matches the number of people living in it.
Session two: Civil Society
Our second session was in partnership with the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (WITS) and the Budget Justice Coalition. Following on from our session with the Housing Assembly, the focus shifted on the underutilisation of public institutions, like universities, for data collection that could encourage better budgets.
Participants shared their frustrations, noting how resources for essential services like water, housing and health for women are often misallocated. One participant remarked that despite budgeting for these services, the actual investment in GRB remains minimal. These sentiments echoed a broader issue: policies exist, but they are not being effectively enforced, leaving challenges unaddressed for over 20 years.
This session underlined the need to recognise issues that disproportionately affect marginalised women, such as housing inequality, unpaid work and health. We acknowledged the responsibility of civil society to address these challenges and continue changing the narrative but also the need to hold the private sector accountable. When political will falters, societal pressure must be applied to ensure it doesn’t fade.
The session also highlighted the need for an optimistic approach, and we left inspired by the women we met and the discussions we had with them.
Session Three: Western Cape Government
The last session allowed us tie everything together and highlighted the importance of considering the dimension of culture in GRB work. The session was very rich thanks to the presence of civil servants from different departments (environment, planning, treasury, health…etc). The importance of disaggregated data including age, race and gender was a key theme. Tailored budgeting relies on accurate data to ensure planning and services meet the actual needs of diverse women, such as providing ramps for Disabled individuals or adequate housing allocations.
Data, however, goes beyond numbers.
It must be accurate, community-driven and effectively used in shaping GRB. The lack of gender-disaggregated data creates a “chicken and egg” dilemma as stated by an individual – without clear data, securing funding is difficult, yet without funding, data collection remains a challenge. This underlined the need for better resource allocation, not just more funds, and the harmonisation of data across different government levels (national, provincial and local), including the use of an accessible tool.
The training also stressed the need to consider intersectionality across men, women, girls and boys—by understanding who they are, where they live, how they commute and their culture, among others. Without a deep understanding of culture, how can policies be truly effective?
As the saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and this is especially true when implementing GRB.
Without aligning strategies with the lived realities of people’s cultures and identities, even the best-intentioned policies can fall short. GRB must therefore be embedded within local cultural contexts to ensure meaningful and lasting change through a sense of ownership.
So much was learnt from this experience, and it’s clear that we must continue to push for the advancement of GRB. As South Africa builds on its current momentum, it’s crucial that we sustain and strengthen these efforts, so that GRB becomes fully embedded in policy and practice for lasting change not only in South Africa, but also in the UK and around the globe. We are looking forward to continuing work with the different partners we met and to import learnings to our local and international work.
(1) CGE-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting-Framework.pdf