In all the contestation around the budget earlier this year, you may just have missed a small seven-page document released by National Treasury, titled the Gender Budget Statement. Whilst the Government of National Unity grappled with VAT increases, fuel levy adjustments, and coalition politics through multiple budget revisions, this modest document quietly represented South Africa’s approach to Gender Responsive Budgeting. Though minimal in scope, it highlights how much more work remains to be done in transforming South Africa budgetary processes into genuine tools for social transformation. 

Gender Responsive Budgeting (GBR) represents one of the most ambitious attempts to systematically address gender inequalities through fiscal policy. In theory, it offers a comprehensive framework for examining how government spending affects women and men differently. GBR emerged from the recognition that ostensibly ‘neutral’ government budgets can perpetuate or exacerbate existing inequalities. As development economists have long argued, mainstream
macroeconomic policies are generally formulated without adequate concern for distributive relations, meaning that budgets which assume neutrality may inadvertently reproduce and worsen inequalities that exist within societies.

The framework divides government expenditure into three categories: gender specific expenditure targeting women directly, expenditure seeking to promote gender equity within public services, and general mainstream expenditure where analysis focuses on the gendered impact of sectoral allocations. This final categorisation allows policymakers to examine not only explicit spending on women’s programmes, but also how seemingly neutral investments in infrastructure, education, or
healthcare have gendered implications.

The rationale for GBR extends beyond simple equity concerns to encompass economic efficiency arguments. Gender analyses of government budgets are crucial for improved targeting, thereby avoiding “false economies”; where attempts to reduce financial costs in one sector transfer or perpetuate actual costs in terms of time use for individuals and groups, particularly women, whilst lowering their overall productivity. This insight proves particularly relevant when considering how cuts to public services often increase women’s unpaid care work.

GBR in South Africa
South Africa’s approach to GRB builds upon a substantial historical foundation. The country pioneered gender budgeting initiatives in the 1990s through the Women’s Budget Initiative, establishing a long tradition of attempting to integrate gender considerations into fiscal policy. This legacy provided the groundwork for the country’s renewed commitment to GRB in the late 2010s. In 2019, the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) and the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) published a Gender Indicator Framework
linking development indicators to programme performance. This was followed by the comprehensive Gender Responsive Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Auditing Framework. Cabinet approved the GRPBMEAF framework on 27 March 2019, with National Treasury mandated to lead implementation from the 2023/24 fiscal year.

Challenges to implementing GBR
However, the reality of implementation reveals significant challenges that undermine the transformative potential of GRB. The Commission for Gender Equality noted that whilst all national departments were supposed to have implemented the framework by 2020, implementation was already lagging behind the timelines and projections established by the DWYPD. This implementation gap reflects deeper structural problems within South Africa’s approach to GRB. In addition, the review by the CGE found that DWYPD, despite leading GRB implementation, lacks the resources and political clout necessary for effective coordination across Government. This institutional weakness creates a fundamental problem: the department responsible for driving gender mainstreaming lacks the authority to compel compliance from more powerful line ministries. The result is that gender responsiveness tends to operate as an “add-on”; rather than a strategic and integral part of resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, National Treasury has not allocated dedicated resources for rolling out GRB, despite being mandated to lead implementation. This absence of ring-fenced funding for GRB implementation suggests that the commitment remains largely rhetorical. In addition, when the 2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework mentioned “reprioritising”; funds towards GRB, it revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of what gender responsive budgeting should entail. GRB is not about creating separate allocations “for gender”, it is about systematic gender analysis across all expenditure categories. In my mind, perhaps the most significant challenge facing GRB in South Africa is the fundamental contradiction between its transformative aspirations and the Government’s commitment to fiscal consolidation. Over the past decade, fiscal austerity has negatively impacted the Government’s role in supporting aggregate economic demand, culminating in constrained economic growth, investment and employment. This approach has systematically degraded public service delivery across sectors including health, education, and social protection. 
The gendered consequences of fiscal consolidation directly contradict GRB’s core principles. As state-provided services contract, underlying care needs do not vanish; they shift to private households. Cultural expectations ensure that women disproportionately absorb these transferred responsibilities, extending their unpaid labour to compensate for withdrawn public provision. Reduced healthcare funding translates into women providing more home-based medical care, whilst education budget cuts increase their supervision of children’s schooling and elderly care
responsibilities. This dynamic systematically increases women’s workload whilst reducing their economic opportunities. Without addressing this fundamental tension, GRB risks becoming merely a supplementary tool with limited scope rather than a meaningful instrument for redressing these structural inequalities.

Data needs for GBR
Effective GBR requires robust, disaggregated data to understand how policies affect different groups. Yet South Africa faces significant challenges in this regard. The huge discrepancies that emerged from the 2022 National Census raise serious concerns about the capacity and capabilities of Statistics South Africa. These data quality issues extend throughout the statistical system, undermining the evidence base necessary for effective GRB. This data deficit is particularly acute regarding unpaid care work. South Africa conducted time use surveys in 2000 and 2010, with plans for a third survey in 2020 that did not materialise. Time use surveys provide essential information on how different people spend their time, revealing the gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work and other forms of productive activities like subsistence work. The 2010 Time Use Survey remains the most recent large-scale data available on unpaid care work, leaving policymakers working with information that is now fifteen years old. In the absence of comprehensive time use data, Stats South Africa includes only limited questions in the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) about water and fuel collection, providing an incomplete picture of care work distribution. While the costly nature of TUS is likely the main reason that the survey has not been undertaken, there have been useful advances in TUS methodologies since 2010. Firstly, using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) (a data collection method where enumerators use tablets or smartphones to conduct in-person surveys, recording respondent answers directly into the device) reduces data coding costs and improves data quality. This approach was utilised in 2017 by Uganda and yielded stronger supervision in the field, faster turnaround times, and fewer errors in data processing. India’s 2019 national survey also demonstrated how streamlined, pre-coded instruments can keep costs manageable, while Kenya in 2021 embedded a light time-use module into an existing household survey to minimise additional fieldwork. For South Africa, the pragmatic next step would be to embed a time use module into the GHS or to expand the existing set of questions within the QLFS. It is crucial that we get updated time use data if we want to draw any meaningful conclusions about women’s socio-economic conditions.

Conclusion
While it is encouraging to see GRB return to policy discussions, South Africa’s experience illustrates the limitations of technical solutions when constrained by institutional weaknesses and conflicting fiscal priorities. DWYPD lacks the authority and resources to drive implementation across Government, whilst National Treasury’s continued emphasis on fiscal consolidation fundamentally contradicts GRB’s requirements for increased social investment. The absence of dedicated resources and updated data systems further constrain its effectiveness. Looking forward, it will be telling to see whether the upcoming MTBPS includes an updated Gender Budget Statement, as this will reveal much about Government’s genuine political commitment to gender transformation beyond mere technical compliance.

References

Budlender, D., Elson,D., Hewitt, G., and Mukhopadhyay, T. 2002. Gender Budgets Make Cents. Available at: https://internationalbudget.org/wp-content/uploads/Gender-Budgets-Make-Cents-Understanding-Gender- Responsive-Budgets.pdf

Women’s Budget Initiative: South Africa Available at: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/387121468114545832/pdf/514200WP0AFR0W10Box342027B01PUBLIC1.pdf

Government’s Gender Responsive Budgeting Framework. Commission for Gender Equality Review of Implementation Report. 2021. Available at: https://cge.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CGE-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting-Framework.pdf

Considerations for Gender Responsive Budgeting in South Africa. 2025. Parliamentary Budget Office. Working paper. Available at: https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/PBO/Occasional_Papers/2025/01-04-2025/PBO_Gender_Responsive_Budgeting_March_2025.pdf

Medium-term Expenditure Framework. Technical Guidelines. 2024. Available at: https://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/guidelines/MTEF%202024%20Guidelines.pdf

Sachs, Amra, Madonko & Wilcox. 2023. Austerity without consolidation: Fiscal policy and spending choices in Budget 2023. Public Economy Project. https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/d7b51cba-da16-4deb-8190-f3732672cdf6/content

Austerity is a Feminist Issue. 2024. AIDC. Available at: https://aidc.org.za/austerity-is-a-feminist-issue-report/#flipbook-austerity-is-a-feminist-issue-report/3/

Moultrie & Dorrington. 2024. The 2022 South African Census. Available at: https://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sajs/v120n7-8/10.pdf

Measuring Time Use: An assessment of issues and challenges in conducting time-use surveys with special emphasis on developing countries. Methodological Inconsistencies, Harmonization Strategies, and Revised Designs. Available at: https://data.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/documents/Publications/Measuring%20time%20use.pdf