Abstract
Budgeting has for too long been considered a technical arena for highly skilled elites. Participatory Budgeting (PB) opens up the field and creates a space for local communities to discuss the equitable distribution of resources. However, gender has not been at the forefront of the PB debate. On the other hand, gender responsive budgeting has had its own growth trajectory, often not including participatory methods. The chapter highlights possible intersections between PB and gender mainstreaming and notes PB’s potential in addressing issues of gender mainstreaming and social justice, following dialogues with other complementary democratic innovations.
Giovanni Allegretti, Senior Researcher at the Centre of Social Studies, Faculty of Economics, Coimbra University, Portugal. Email: allegretto70@gmail.com.
Roberto Falanga, Postdoctoral Fellow, Mobilizing the Potential of Active Ageing in Europe, European FP7 Project, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. Email: roberto.falanga@hotmail.it.
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Notes
- 1.
This text owes part of its reflections to the project ‘Participatory Budgeting as innovative tool for reinventing local institutions in Portugal and Cape Verde: A critical analysis of performance and transfers’ (PTDC/CS-SOC/099134/2008, funded by FEDER—COMPETE and FCT). We want to deeply thank Craig Laird for reading the text with patience and correcting its grammar imperfections.
- 2.
When Appadurai developed his five dimensions for reading global cultural economy (ethnoscape, technoscape, financescape, mediascape, and ideoscape), he tried to demonstrate that globalization is not merely rooted in the expansion of global capitalism within core–periphery models and does not produce only a homogenized global culture. He sought to demonstrate that modernity circulates through geographic, diasporic, imaginary and local spaces producing several irregularities of globalization (Martínez 2012). Under this perspective, the suffix ‘-scapes’ is used to parallel the variable and often uneven terrain of landscapes to that of uneven global modernization. ‘Ideoscapes’ can be seen as attempts to capture State power and therefore also consist of counter-ideologies in opposition to modern, dominant political discourses. In this light, we imagine PB as an ideoscape, born in Latin America and hybridized during its circulation around the world.
- 3.
INCLUIR is the acronym of “El Presupuesto Participativo como instrumento de lucha contra la exclusión social y territorial”, coordinated by the City of Venice within the EU-funded URBAL programme; Network nº 9 was developed between 2004 and 2006 and is dedicated to Participatory Budgeting and Local Finances. See more at: http://www.comune.venezia.it (15 March 2014).
- 4.
See: www.ongcidade.org (15 March 2014).
- 5.
This could be translated as: “Through Women’s Eyes. The Speech of Female Councillors on Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre”.
- 6.
The COP is made up of 64 citizens elected by the community assemblies during the annual PB process that make the final decisions related to the annual priorities of PB.
- 7.
Conclusions presented at the ‘IV Conferência Municipal de Políticas Públicas para Mulheres de Porto Alegre’. Diagnóstico e Desafios, 11 and 12 September 2009.
- 8.
Among the data published in the Conference of 2009 that criticized the declining commitment of the Town Hall in promoting women. It was noted that the Porto Alegre women’s programme (one of the 21 programmes into which PB is divided) has always been the smallest and most marginal. As an example, it was revealed in 2008 that out of a 2.8 billion budget (in R$), only 109,000 R$ was dedicated to the gender programme, and only 38 % of resources was used.
- 9.
Conclusion presented at the ‘IV Conferência Municipal de Políticas Públicas para Mulheres de Porto Alegre’. Diagnóstico e Desafios, 11 and 12 September 2009.
- 10.
The study Politicas para as Mulheres em Fortaleza shows that here (between 2005 and 2008) the women represented 67 % of overall participants.
- 11.
The main changes—after elections led to a different political coalition—have been in the area of administrative reorganization of political responsibilities, which marginalized participation in the political strategy of the new mayor. For more details see: http://www.uclg-cisdp.org/es/observatorio/la-inclusi%C3%B3n-de-mujeres-ind%C3%ADgenas-en-un-proceso-de-presupuesto-participativo-local (15 March 2014).
- 12.
The OIDP “Best Practices in Citizen Participation” distinction was created in 2006 by the International Observatory of Participatory Democracy. See: http://www.oidp.net/en/projects/oidp-distinction-best-practice-in-citizen-participation/ (15 March 2014).
- 13.
See Box 9: Participatory Budgeting and Gender Mainstreaming: The Rosario Experiment in Sintomer et al. (2013).
- 14.
See: http://www.presupuestoygenero.net (15 March 2014).
- 15.
In District 39, 97 % of women spoke during small group discussions, 80 % made specific budget proposals and 33 % volunteered to be budget delegates (p. 84 of the 2013 Report).
- 16.
See: http://www.partizipation.at/part_budget0.html (15 March 2014).
- 17.
An interesting tale, circulated by the Director of the PB Project Josh Lerner, tells of a woman he interviewed in Rosario for his Ph.D. thesis who proudly affirmed that she was able to ‘divorce’ her husband owing to Rosario PB. PB enhanced her social relations, allowing her to feel supported, and she could leave the suffering and isolation she lived in when she felt weaker due to lack of friends and community support.
- 18.
Especially, see Article 13 of Beijing Declaration and the MDG 3.
- 19.
Scale and distance have an impact on the participation of women, which falls off rapidly the farther away from the community public meetings are held (Inter-American Development Bank 2004: 38), since physical and financial cost of participation increase with distance from home and affect representation (particularly of women) in the forum of delegates and COP (Inter-American Development Bank 2004: 34).
- 20.
For example, in PB in Amadora and Leça da Palmeira district in Matosinhos Municipality, the presence of women in public assemblies (reduced respectively to 38.2 and to 11.9 %) can be explained by the fact that mostly members of elected local district councils participate in these two places, thus reproducing the dynamic of Portuguese representative institutions where the presence of women is scarce.
- 21.
In June 1999, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Porto Alegre conducted the first workshop on ‘Public Budget and Gender Policies’ to strengthen Labour municipal governments to include gender issues in the planning and implementation of municipal policies.
- 22.
See Indicator no 7 in the UMP document (2004), “Participatory Budgeting: Conceptual Framework and Analysis of its Contribution to Urban Governance and the Millennium Development Goals”. It is entitled ‘Percentage of women councillors in local authorities’ and somehow reduces the understanding of power differences that separate men from women in participatory processes.
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Allegretti, G., Falanga, R. (2016). Women in Budgeting: A Critical Assessment of Participatory Budgeting Experiences. In: Ng, C. (eds) Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24496-9_3
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