Gender Responsive Budgeting report agreed by Derry and Strabane councillors

A report on Gender Responsive Budgeting has been passed unanimously by the members of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Governance and Strategic Planning committee.

Proposed by Cllr Rory Farrell (SDLP) and seconded by Cllr Emma McGinley (Sinn Féin), the report recommended the piloting of an initiative in leisure services.

Tuesday’s Gender Responsive Budgeting report resulted from a motion passed by Council in February 2023 which stated: “This Council notes that gender-responsive budgeting is an internationally recognised tool to analyse public spending for its effect on gender equality and improve the effectiveness of government policies.

“Council acknowledges Northern Ireland Women’s Budget Group's assessment that gender- responsive budgeting is crucial to promoting gender equality and securing policies that mitigate disproportionate gender impacts of public spending.

“Council further acknowledges that Northern Ireland lags significantly behind other areas of Great Britain and other OECD countries in terms of implementing gender responsive budgeting practices.

“Council recognises that the collection of gender-specific data allows for a deeper analysis of how policies and budgets affect individuals and therefore requests that Council officers work towards ensuring that all Council collected data is disaggregated by gender.

“Council also instructs Council officers to compile a report on other measures that Council could take to introduce gender responsive budgeting, with consideration given to embedding gender impact assessments into budget statements and annual reports.

“Council further instructs Council officers to engage with the Northern Ireland Women's Budget Group to explore the feasibility of undertaking a pilot gender budget analysis project within Derry City and Strabane District Council.”

Further to this motion, which was brought to Council by then Cllr Lilian Seenoi-Barr, officers met with representatives from the NI Women’s Budget Group (NIWBG) on a number of occasions to build capacity in respect of this approach and explore potential areas for analysis purposes.

This engagement included a presentation to the Senior Leadership Team in October 2024 and was attended by Alex Brennan, Coordinator of the NIWBG; Aoife Mallon, Research and Engagement Associate on the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust Gender Budgeting Project, Ulster University (UU); and Liz Law, Member of the NIWBG and Member of the Board of Directors for the UK Women’s Budget Group.

It was noted that more than 61% of OECD member states use some form of gender budgeting.

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The Gender Responsive Budgeting report asserted that Gender Budgeting was “good budgeting because it: encourages transparency in the budget process; strengthens links between policy and budgets; encourages evidence-based policy making; and facilitates meaningful implementation of equality and human rights duties”.

Derry City and Strabane District Council has carried out some initial work scoping the feasibility of using leisure services as a potential pilot given the level of citizen participation and the existence of core monitoring data.

There has also been some preliminary engagement with leisure management.

Further to this exploratory work, the representatives from Ulster University and the NI Women’s Budget Group are keen to develop a pilot, the first stages of which would involve identifying the existing gender data across activities and highlighting gaps.

To support this process, it was proposed that a working group comprising leisure services management, policy team representatives, data, and cost collation/analysis officers, along with support from UU and NIWBG is set up to assist in the data capture.

Councillors noted the progress on Gender Responsive Budgeting to date and endorsed the proposed approach to the data capture stage of the pilot.